Get Help in R - Get Help Strategically | R-Tutorials.com

in this video we will take a look at the many health features of our there are many layers of help information in our each of those layers caters to a specific scenario unfortunately much of the intro material on our does not cover well how to get help strategically once you internalize the information I'm about to deliver you will be able to save a lot of time and energy when using our so what are we going to learn in this video first we're going to learn about the built in standard our help function then we're gonna learn about the built-in health functions at a package level I will also show you how to get help online at the topic level which are the task views and on top of that we are also going to take a look at their online forums like Stack Overflow so as you can see this structure is divided into online and offline health features our base has quite a lot of info available that can get you a long way this is already on your computer accessible without internet connection certainly you need to know how to extract value out of this information and of course you need to get access to the right information so let's start with layer 1 the built in standard our health function this one comes with R and has its own window in our studio this means that you can access this help feature either with code the old our way or you use the convenient click interface of our studio so when is it indicated to use this form of our help basically you will need this feature when you already know which function you want to use but you do not know how to use it we will now take a look at an example so that I can show you how that works out in practice we will now use the plot function which I have identified is helpful for many given scenarios I do not know how to use it and how to modify it therefore I can either code question mark plot to plot this the name of the function or I simply go to the bottom right window and select help you now I can insert plot and I would get a list of all available functions starting with that same verb plot I will now choose this one let's actually enlarge the help window so that you can get a better view on what is happening in our all right so this is where all the info is available this is the exact place we are looking for the our help section is always structured in the same way each our function no matter who wrote it or whichever add-on package it is contained in so each our function is described in this exact format we have a description which tells you briefly what this function is about and what the alternatives to that function are in this case we are also provided with a link to the graphical parameters which are of high importance to tailor our graphs after the description we go to the usage this one is rather limited here but do not underestimate this part of the help section it tells you how the function looks like which arguments are mandatory and the order of the arguments in the function in this case we can see that we have arguments x and y and there are also those dots over here which indicate that there is a number of extra arguments that can be added to this function but they are only optional and are used not only in this function equally as important is the next part the arguments these are the building blocks which you feed into your function with these arguments you will tailor your function in accordance to your needs here we learn that we have arguments x and y which are the coordinates for our plots this is nothing else than the data to be used for the plot note that most of the time the first argument will be the data used for the operation to be performed this varies with a function it will be a vector matrix data frame and so on when using a new function you can use the help section to find out which sort of data or which object class you can use for this specific function so here if we further investigate on the arguments we see that we have all sorts of graphical parameters available we can provide info on titles subtitles labels and so on since this is a very important function of our and a very old one as well you get all sorts of links in here to get in-depth information about titles graphical parameters and so on but we will keep it simple here since this video is not about plotting an XY plot it is about showing you how to strategically use the our help function the next part contains the details regarding this function this is not very prominent in this case but if you have a more complicated function where the meaning of the argument is not clear you will get this sort of invoke in this part then we have the see also section which will basically explain to you which alternative functions are available in this case it also provides a list of useful add-on features like lines or points to be used for our plots sometimes you will find a list of references and publications supporting a given function if you are using complicated statistical procedures it is important to know the underlying research supporting this tool oftentimes a function works with a sophisticated algorithm which required scientific credentials as proof those credentials are in the reference section and there are also examples available at least most of the time this gives you an idea about how this function looks in real world so here we can see how those graphical parameters are applied to a standard XY plot you can of course just copy and paste this code into your console to see the results and to experiment with a code I find it helpful when I'm using a new function and it is not yet clear to me which type of data I should use for the arguments all right so this was the standard are health function it is easily accessed by a question mark command or the help window offline help is also available at the package level if we go to packages we get the list of all packages available on our machine some of them are active they have this tick mark over here and some are inactive so let's say we want to learn more about the data dot table package I already downloaded it on my machine via installed or packages or the install feature over here it is a very popular add-on package which enables you to handle huge datasets in our it is much faster in its computation than our base and makes filtering data very easy I simply love it so you might take a look at it as well if we click the package we get to the documentation of this data to table package we learn about the title and there is all sorts of material available I did not pick this package by coincidence not only is it powerful on huge datasets it also has a high quality documentation this means there is not only the package PDF which contains all the functions including arguments much like in the standard our help feature there are also several vignettes available vignettes are available only for some very popular packages and they are user friendly intros to those packages on the help page itself we get an alphabetical list of all the functions available in that package if we click a function we again get to the help section we've already learned about note that in the top left corner next to the function name you also get the package that houses the function which in this case is data to a table if we go back to the help section of the package we can check out this link to the description file it is a small file containing info on the creator of the package the version number is more abstract and we are also shown the dependable packages those are packages that are downloaded automatically when you install data dot table if we go back we can also check out the user guides which give us a list of vignettes this is precious information if you just start out with this specific tool again vignettes are available only for some packages but those are generally of high quality let's see how such a vignette looks like I'm going to select the quick intro vignette since this one is a PDF at the right-hand side you can select the format for the vignette display for offline purposes and for this screencast I think PDF is the easiest if those are HTML vignettes it's easiest to access it from the internet and to display it on your browser so here in this PDF we basically get a mini tutorial on this tool step by step the author explains what you can do with this package and there is also example code including the output really helpful and it explains the philosophy behind this package again if available those vignettes are gold alright so those are the two layers of help that you have on your machine you can use this whole thing offline but what if you want information at the more basic level what if you do not yet know which function to use or which libraries you can take a look at well those questions are best tackled online the our community has online registers for most of the disciplines it's used in those registers contain all the available packages for a certain topic for you as the user that simply means if you are conducting analysis in your field and you want to find out what R has to offer you can simply check out the task view if you google our task views you should be directed to this cran site this is a list of all tasks views available at this moment by checking out these views you could make the conclusion that the disciplines covered here have a strong focus in our there are extended communities available that write and update certain packages which contain functions for those disciplines so let's say we are interested in natural language processing which is the analysis of text so let's click the natural language processing task view as you can see we now get to a site that lists all available packages to that specific topic we get an introduction to the topic at the head and then there is text which has the relevant packages embedded this allows you to orient yourself and gives some hints about what the packages contain the task view is split into different rubrics and the packages focusing on those rubrics which makes orientation even easier again if you're new to our and you want to find out which packages might help you for your research this is the place to go you might even find out that your particular field is not well supported and you're better off using an alternative software like SAS or MATLAB and so on at the bottom of the view you can see a full list with direct links to the packages and there is also a reference list with links this is really a great resource to learn more about a specific topic in our after you have identified the packages you need you can download them in our and start using them downloading your whole task view with all the packages is possible with a package CTV and the function install dot fuse but it is not recommended since you will get loads of unnecessary packages as well which occupies disk space all right so now we discussed the first three layers of our health features but what is the fourth one well this one is about finding the right communities to ask questions and find answers there is an our mailing list which I do not find that helpful it is slow and you might not find the right answers right away I would rather recommend using Stack Overflow which has a huge user community and some of them are very skilled it is even a great platform to build credibility by collecting credits for helpful answers people are using these profiles even in their CVS and job applications Stack Overflow has a section about are where a lot of problems are already discussed I find that 90% of the questions I receive from students are already discussed and solved over here at Stack Overflow if you go to the website appear you just type in your search term in this case let's say we want to search for histograms in ggplot2 we get a whole lot of answers that might help even if the first few hits are not right on you will find related posts once you are in a thread this basically allows you to bootstrap your way to a suitable answer again Stack Overflow is a great resource for developers and you should use it for our related questions of course there are also domain specific forums that are the right place for very specific questions you might not find a geologist at Stack Overflow but there are some forums for geologists where you can ask questions about analytics and powerful packages in that specific field all right guys so those were four ways in how you can get help in arm all of those methods have their own implications you consult a community like Stack Overflow when you do not yet know how to go about a specific question those guys can help you in the planning phase of your project or when you are totally stuck at one point I showed you how to use task views to identify suitable packages for a given discipline they showed you how to get more info about a specific package within our vignettes are a great tool to get familiar with a new package and to understand its structure and of course we also learned about the very important our health functionality which you can access either there our studio or via the question mark function

Channel: R Tutorials

Views: 1,754

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: r programming, r help, r tutorial, rstudio, r forum, r language, r beginner, r task view, r packages

Id: vySGuusQI3Y

Length: 17min 49sec (1069 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 27 2016