Learn R

The usefulness of R is due almost entirely due to all the packages available. These are what make complex tasks quite easy to perform. However, there are hundreds of packages, with new ones being created all the time.

Talk with colleagues to find out which packages are used the most in your field.

• CRAN Task Views – Pick a topic and read a narrative about a ton of relevant packages
  • See also Task Views at RDocumentation for lists of packages referenced with popularity information
  • See also R Site Search to search the contents of functions and task views
• Quick list of useful R packages – RStudio points out some of the favorites organized by goal, many are part of Hadley Wickham's tidyverse (any of which are great)
• Great R packages for data import, wrangling & Visualization – Computerworld’s sort-able tables make this compilation especially useful
• Awesome R – a curated list of packages, geared toward advanced users with special topics such as machine learning

Good Packages to Start with

To quickly get started, install jmv and summarytools to install many of the most common packages (other packages it installs are called "dependencies". The tidyverse package is also good to install, but it can take a long time. RStudio will ask you to install packages as needed. 

Specific packages that are not installed with the above that are good include stargazer.