Using R and RStudio

Out of the box, R is completely usable. Open R on your machine. Let's use R for some basic arithmetic such as addition, multiplication, subtraction, and division. The following screenshot demonstrates this:

It also provides functions such as sum() and sqrt() for addition and calculation of the square root. The following screenshot shows this in action:

R can—and will—do basic arithmetic like a calculator, using symbols you're familiar with. One you may not have used before is exponentiate, where you use two asterisks, for example, 4 ** 2, which you can read as 4 to the power of 2.

Once you want to start doing math beyond basic arithmetic, such as finding square roots or summing many numbers, you have to start using functions.