This book does not teach R programming, but each chapter has an “R lab”
with data analysis and simulations. Students can learn R from these labs and
by using R’s help or the manual An Introduction to R (available at the CRAN
web site and R’s online help) to learn more about the functions used in the labs.
Also, the text does indicate which R functions are used in the examples. Occasionally, R code is given to illustrate some process, for example, in Chap. 16
finding the tangency portfolio by quadratic programming. For readers wishing
to use R, the bibliographical notes at the end of each chapter mention books
that cover R programming and the book’s web site contains examples of the
R and WinBUGS code used to produce this book. Students enter my course
Statistics for Financial Engineering with quite disparate knowledge of R. Some
are very accomplished R programmers, while others have no experience with
R, although all have experience with some programming language. Students
with no previous experience with R generally need assistance from the instructor to get started on the R labs. Readers using this book for self-study should
learn R first before attempting the R labs.
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