R Cookbook for the Casual Dabbler
A new edition 5-years on
In February 2025, I released R Cookbook for the Casual Dabbler (2nd edition)
RCCD 1st edition was originally published in 2020 as a side project during the COVID-19 pandemic in Melbourne.
As I wrote in the midst of lock down:
I use R a lot for work and for side projects. Over the years I’ve collated a bunch of useful scripts, from macroeconomic analysis to quick hacks for making map legends format properly.
Historically my code has been stored in random Rpubs documents, medium articles, and a bunch of .Rmd files on my hardrive. Occasionally I feel like doing things properly - and upload code to a repository on github.
It doesn’t take a genius to realize this isn’t a very sustainable solution - and it also isn’t very useful for sharing code with others. It turns out 2-years of lock down in Melbourne was enough incentive to sit down and collate my best and most useful code into a single place. In the spirit of open source, a book seemed like the most logical format.
RCCD1e had surprisingly good (and long-lasting reviews). Alas, five-years on, a lot has changed - in both the R community, and the world more broadly.
As such, RCCD2e includes significant revisions. The most major of these is a restructure to make the chapters flow more logically. Additionally:
The Australian specific chapters have also been grouped together (e.g. election data and ABS economic indicators).
There are new chapters on functions, packages, as well as more advanced econometric techniques (Bayesian approaches and causal inference).
Worked examples have been updated to reflect best (or at least better) practice.
Many a bug and typo has been fixed.
