(click on the image for a larger view)
(click on the image for a larger view)
The R Commander is a graphical user interface (GUI) to the free, open-source R statistical software. The R Commander is implemented as an R package, the Rcmdr package, which is freely available on CRAN (the R package archive).
For information on the R Commander GUI, see John Fox, Using the R Commander (Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, 2017) and the introductory manual distributed with the package (accessible via the Help -> Introduction to the R Commander menu). An earlier version of the R Commander was described in a paper in the Journal of Statistical Software (which is now out of date)
To install the Rcmdr package, after
installing R, see the R
Commander installation notes, which gives specific
information for Windows, macOS, and Linux/Unix users, including
information on trouble-shooting.
A common issue with the R Commander: If you save the R workspace when you exit from R (which, unfortunately, is the out-of-the-box default at the end of a session on all platforms and in RStudio), then you can expect to experience problems when the saved workspace is loaded at the start of subsequent sessions. The preemptive remedy is never to save the R workspace at the end of a session. If you do save the workspace on exiting from R, the remedy is to delete the file in which the workspace is saved, which is named .RData. Files with names beginning with a period are (again unfortunately) generally hidden from the Windows File Explorer and the macOS Finder. To reveal .RData in Windows File Explorer, see these instructions; in macOS Finder, see these instructions. Finally, If you exit from R directly from the R Commander, the R workspace isn't saved.
I'd very much appreciate learning about your experiences with the R Commander or suggestions that you may have for its further development.
Last modified: 2022-02-11 by John Fox <jfox AT mcmaster.ca>.