Where to ask for help when coding in R

When learning R, it can be tough to figure out how to apply what you’ve learned to your own data. We often learn general skills that are helpful for manipulating our data, but things aren’t always so simple when it comes to your own analysis. Sometimes, we have very specific problems that we need to address but don’t know how.

In this blog post, I’m going to describe a few R forums that are particularly useful when you need specific help with your own project.

As an example, let’s say that we want to replace a specific character of every word (string) in this vector:

words <- c("Apple", "Orange", "Banana", "Peach", "Nectarine")

I know that there must be a function that can address this, but I don’t know how to accomplish my particular need.

No worries, we’ll just turn to Google real quick. How convenient—one of the first results is someone asking a similar question on StackOverflow. Even better, there are a whole bunch of related questions that are listed underneath the main result, in case any of those might also help me out.

If we click on the link, we can see the specific question that the person asked.

And if we scroll down further, we can see the answers that people have provided. The really awesome part about StackOverflow and similar forums is that you can receive opinions from multiple people. There will always be multiple ways to solve a problem, and learning about the multiple ways can help you think more creatively when you code. People will often also comment on the answers themselves, generating discussion about why a certain method might be better than another, or how it can be improved.

These forums are great references because you’ll find that a lot of people have similar questions to you. But there are also situations where you’re analyzing your data and have a question that is VERY specific to your data or analysis. Times like this will call for you to make your own detailed post!

I highlighted StackOverflow in this blog post, but there are a number of other sites that serve similar purposes.

Here are some of my favorite forum resources:

…for questions related specifically to coding in R:

• StackOverflow (questions related to R)

• The Facebook group “R Statistical Software”

• The website “Rseek.org”

• The RStudio Community forum

…for questions seeking advice on statistics or research:

• ResearchGate

• CrossValidated, the statistical side of StackOverflow

• The GIS StackExchange, for advice on spatial analyses

…for any type of question related to R and data analysis!

• The Facebook group “Ecology in R”

• The Facebook group “Statistics using R Programming”

• Our very own Facebook group for students enrolled in our courses: “The Basics of R (for ecologists)"

Now go forth and add all these resources to your R toolbelt! Feel free to leave any of your favorite resources in the comments below.