Modeling in R

Spreadsheet are straightforward to work with and do not require extensive knowledge of programming; they are easy to communicate with among people with varying levels of expertise; are convenient for optimization problems, given the availability of prepackaged Solver algorithms; and are commonly used for modeling in business management, nonprofit organization budgeting, consulting, and academia. But spreadsheets have their limitations, particularly when modeling large populations, long time periods, or complex situations with many states or conditions and equations. For larger scale models that need more flexibility than can be offered by a spreadsheet, the free statistical program R provides a straightforward approach to modeling and has the advantages of being free, fast, available on any operating system, commonly used, and widely supported by an online community. This chapter provides a detailed introduction to R that will be useful for the more advanced modeling methods introduced in Chapters 8 through 11.