This course provides a rigorous introduction to the R programming language, with a particular focus on using R for software development in a data science setting. Whether you are part of a data science team or working individually within a community of developers, this course will give you the knowledge of R needed to make useful contributions in those settings. As the first course in the Specialization, the course provides the essential foundation of R needed for the following courses. We cover basic R concepts and language fundamentals, key concepts like tidy data and related "tidyverse" tools, processing and manipulation of complex and large datasets, handling textual data, and basic data science tasks. Upon completing this course, learners will have fluency at the R console and will be able to create tidy datasets from a wide range of possible data sources.
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About this Course
Learner Career Outcomes
45%
41%
12%
Skills you will gain
Learner Career Outcomes
45%
41%
12%
Offered by

Johns Hopkins University
The mission of The Johns Hopkins University is to educate its students and cultivate their capacity for life-long learning, to foster independent and original research, and to bring the benefits of discovery to the world.
Syllabus - What you will learn from this course
Basic R Language
In this module, you'll learn the basics of R, including syntax, some tidy data principles and processes, and how to read data into R.
Basic R Language: Lesson Choices
Data Manipulation
During this module, you'll learn to summarize, filter, merge, and otherwise manipulate data in R, including working through the challenges of dates and times.
Data Manipulation: Lesson Choices
Text Processing, Regular Expression, & Physical Memory
During this module, you'll learn to use R tools and packages to deal with text and regular expressions. You'll also learn how to manage and get the most from your computer's physical memory when working in R.
Text Processing, Regular Expression, & Physical Memory: Lesson Choices
Choice 1: Get credit while using swirl | Choice 2: Get credit by providing a code from swirl
Large Datasets
In this final module, you'll learn how to overcome the challenges of working with large datasets both in memory and out as well as how to diagnose problems and find help.
Reviews
TOP REVIEWS FROM THE R PROGRAMMING ENVIRONMENT
Very Very Rigorous Course for a beginner on R language and because of its nature, after completing just one course, I feel like I have gained a lot of knowledge and also familiarity with R language.
A very good course to read and get the valuable content of R language. This is for the students who want to learn and practice the basic and some intermediate concepts of data manipulation.
Good to learn the possibilities in the R environment. In the end you learn most by applying it to your own projects (with a lot of help in available documentation or via internet sea).
Excellent class. I had already done a lot of the swirls and would have liked that to be in my record somewhere, although it really wasn't hard--and was probably good--to repeat them.
About the Mastering Software Development in R Specialization
R is a programming language and a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics, widely used by data analysts, data scientists and statisticians. This Specialization covers R software development for building data science tools. As the field of data science evolves, it has become clear that software development skills are essential for producing and scaling useful data science results and products.

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