In this chapter, we installed R and explored the different options for GUIs and IDEs, and looked at some examples of the power of R. We saw how R makes it easy to manage and reformat data and produce beautiful plots with a few lines of code. You also learned a little about the coding conventions and data structures of R. We saw how to format a dataset and produce an interactive plot in a document quickly and easily. Finally, we installed Shiny, ran the examples included in the package, and were introduced to a couple of basic concepts in Shiny.
In the next chapter, we will go on to build our own Shiny application using the default UI.