PL SC 404: Analyzing Public Policy in the American States

This book is a problem-solution primer for using R to set up your data, pose your problems and get answers using a wide array of statistical tests. The book walks you through R basics and how to use R to accomplish a wide variety statistical operations. You'll be able to navigate the R system, enter and import data, manipulate datasets, calculate summary statistics, create statistical plots and customize their appearance, perform hypothesis tests such as the t-tests and analyses of variance, and build regression models. Examples are built around actual datasets to simulate real-world solutions, and programming basics are explained to assist those who do not have a development background. No prior knowledge of R or of programming is assumed, though you should have some experience with statistics.

This new edition to the classic book by ggplot2 creator Hadley Wickham highlights compatibility with knitr and RStudio. ggplot2 is a data visualization package for R that helps users create data graphics, including those that are multi-layered, with ease. With ggplot2, it's easy to:   produce handsome, publication-quality plots with automatic legends created from the plot specification superimpose multiple layers (points, lines, maps, tiles, box plots) from different data sources with automatically adjusted common scales add customizable smoothers that use powerful modeling capabilities of R, such as loess, linear models, generalized additive models, and robust regression save any ggplot2 plot (or part thereof) for later modification or reuse create custom themes that capture in-house or journal style requirements and that can easily be applied to multiple plots approach a graph from a visual perspective, thinking about how each component of the data is represented on the final plot   This book will be useful to everyone who has struggled with displaying data in an informative and attractive way. Some basic knowledge of R is necessary (e.g., importing data into R).  ggplot2 is a mini-language specifically tailored for producing graphics, and you'll learn everything you need in the book. After reading this book you'll be able to produce graphics customized precisely for your problems, and you'll find it easy to get graphics out of your head and on to the screen or page.