With so much emphasis on getting insight from data these days, it's no wonder that R is rapidly rising in popularity. R was designed from day one to handle statistics and data visualization, it's highly extensible with many new packages aimed at solving real-world problems and it's open source (read "free").

If you're ready to learn, we have just the ticket: A free PDF of Computerworld's "Beginner's guide to R."

Included in this 45-page guide:

Introduction: First steps, including downloading R and RStudio, setting your working directory and installing and using packages.

Get your data into R: Importing local and remote files, copying data from your clipboard, saving after import.

Easy ways to do basic data analysis: Examining a data object, seeing basic stats with one line of code, slicing/subsetting your data.

Painless data visualization: Base R graphics, ggplot2, adding color, exporting graphics.

Syntax quirks: A few ways in which R is most unlike other programming languages -- learn these and you'll be ready to tackle R's idiosyncrasies. Plus: How to use SQL syntax within R.

Additional resources: More than 60 recommended websites, videos, blogs, social media/communities, software and books to help you on your R journey.

Sure, it will take more than any single guide to make you an R master. But if you read all the explanations and follow the code, you should be well on your way to using R to get more out of your data.

If you are not already part of the Computerworld Insider program, register for free and then download the guide.

Happy learning!