The existence of packages written specifically for performing certain tasks is one of the things that makes R such a great scripting platform for data management, analysis, and visualization.
There are recommendations of packages which contain functions built especially for lots of commonly used research areas of biological computing, such as analyzing spatial data, ecological and environmental analysis, and genetics.
Some packages are interrelated with others, and share common style and language–the tidyverse is one well-known example for data management and statistics (“data science”).
The CRAN (Comprehensive R Archive Network) contains versions of packages which are tested and known to work on all systems and under the specified versions of R. Other package contributors who want to share their work without undergoing CRAN review will offer them elsewhere online (e.g. at GitHub).
We will be exploring different approaches to managing and visualizing data in R. These are some of the packages which will be the work horses of our methods.
Install the packages “ggplot2” and “RMariaDB” using the Install
button on the “Packages” tab of the RStudio panel. As the installation
proceeds, watch the Console for the function call and response.
Using what you observed in the console, install the package “data.table” from the command line (console or script window).
Make all three packages active in the environment.
Display the help for the function fread in the “data.table” package.