I'm looking for resources to start exploring the R language (as was recommended in my question on Statistical Tools). I know there are some suggestions for basic online tutorials in this thread, but I'd like something a little bit more extensive.
Any suggestions for good textbook like references, either online and in dead-tree form?
The Wikipedia has a list of books in its Resources section at the bottom of the page.
Hope they are of use to you.
I've found the following online book, which has the benefit of being free: An Introduction to R
Anyone can tell me if it's any good?
Check out these notes on R for programmers. I found R hard to learn because it's so unlike other programming languages, so I wrote up these notes for other programmers coming to R.
Also, as far as books, I recommend The R Book by Michael Crawley. It's expensive, around $100, but it's well-written and covers a lot of material (around 900 pages).
The best book I know of for learning R is actually a book about R's almost-identical-twin S:
Modern Applied Statistics with S (by Venables and Ripley)
I originally learned R from Venables and Ripley, and found it to be the best at the time. I looked at Dalgaard, but found that I progressed very quickly beyond what it covered. It is good if there are only a few basic stats you want to do, but if you want to go any further with programming in R, it is too basic. The free Introduction to R is okay, but not the best way to get started quickly, in my experience.
What I currently recommend to anyone starting R is Crawley's The R Book. It is extremely complete and easy to read, with good examples. After using R for 6 years, I managed to pick up a half dozen new tricks just from reading the first chapter. I recommend it without hesitation, if you can afford to spend any money at all.
A First Course in Statistical Programming with R
Really good explanaitions of the basics in the first chapters, then goes deeper.
I've posted a list of nine recommended books on R here: http://robjhyndman.com/researchtips/r-books/
As with statistical models, there may not be a single book that is universally best for everyone. What is best for you, may well be about average for me. Dalgaard’s Introductory statistics with R is a good book. Rizzo's Statistical computing with R is another good book (for another thing). The series of inexpensive and focused books on R by Springer are good, too. Just start from a subset of Rob Hyndman's list (or any good equivalent), see what works best for you and eventually create your own list.
On another note, the review of Crawley's R book that Rob pointed to is helpful. But the number of typos, grammar issues and style inconsistencies per half-page is somewhat less than acceptable for a tier B refereed journal. Also, Zeilberger's opinion 63 comes to mind.
Norman Matloff's R for Programmers PDF: http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/~matloff/R/RProg.pdf
This is for a distinct audience; it's not an introduction to statistical methods in R as much as an introduction to the R language. Really excellent though.