[R] Useful books for learning the R software and the S programming language

[Peter Dalgaard]

Robert Wilk wrote:
> any useful books for learning the R statistical software?
> are they pricey?

Many. "Useful" depends on the reader, though, so look around. Here's a 
starting point

http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html

(modesty should forbid me to point at item 18 on the list and the fact 
that Amazon US has it currently 19% discounted....)

In general R books are cheaper than statistical monographs, but more 
expensive than the large market computer science books.

> and if the books recommended focus on S, how compatible will they be for
> someone learning R?

Such books are strongly outnumbered by now. One important book from that 
group is Venables+Ripley's Modern Applied Statistics with S explicitly 
addresses R issues.

> 
> thank you in advance for your help.
> 
> 
> P.S.
> specialized survey statistical procedures? Is R good at that?

Not R in itself, but the "survey" package for it is rumoured to be state 
of the art, and its author has a book on it in its final stages.


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