In the previous chapter, we learned to use R to extract information from web pages. To understand how this works, we learned several languages such as HTML, CSS, and XPath. In fact, R has much more to offer than just a statistical computing environment. The R community provides tools for everything from data collection, to data manipulation, statistical modeling, visualization, and all the way to reporting and presentation.
In this chapter, we will learn about a number of packages that boost our productivity. We'll review several languages we learned throughout this book and get to know another one: markdown. We'll see how R and markdown can be combined to produce powerful dynamic documents. More specifically, we'll:
Get to know markdown and R Markdown
Embed tables, charts, diagrams and interactive plots
Create interactive apps
