This is a book about Software for Data Analysis: using computer software
to extract information from some source of data by organizing, visualizing,
modeling, or performing any other relevant computation on the data. We
all seem to be swimming in oceans of data in the modern world, and tasks
ranging from scientific research to managing a business require us to extract
meaningful information from the data using computer software.
This book is aimed at those who need to select, modify, and create
software to explore data. In a word, programming. Our programming will
center on the R system. R is an open-source software project widely used
for computing with data and giving users a huge base of techniques.