Preface

I remembering hearing about this thing called R as far back as 2003/2004, and back then in the context of seeing a maximum likelihood function in action. There was no RStudio at the time so it was all base-R, and that is how this love affair with open-source programming began. I would have learned nothing were it not for the selfless hundreds of thousands of coders out there who gladly share their knowledge. Some of these are legends in my mind because their packages have made working with data so much easier than it used to be. I remember working with graphics, initially in base-R and then with {lattice}. Both were/are wonderful environments but {ggplot2} has opened up a new world. The rise of APIs and the march of R packages that tap APIs has similarly changed how we gather updated data. I suppose what I am trying to say is that (a) the R ecosystem is a beautiful thing, and that (b) I am sharing what I have learned from others. All errors of interpretation and/or code execution are mine alone but credit for doing something right goes to the #rstats community and, in good measure, to the eagle-eyed students and workshop participants who have flagged typos or broken code. A special shout-out to Elizabeth Kinney. Shukriya!!