Not for nothing, but the continuing quest for the "best" intro to R book finds a new contenda. It's name is "The Book of R" by Tilman Davies. Yes, it likely, on purpose, sounds like "The R Book" by Michael Crawley. Moreover, Davies is a Kiwi. A bit of island rivalry? And, yes, while Pluto is no longer a planet, Australia never was a continent.
So, what's the difference between them? Let me count the ways.
Crawley: hardcover, best binding I've encountered in ages, ~1,000 pages, only base graphics, liberal use of color, 2012, expensive
Davies: paperback but RepKover so a beneficial binding, ~800 pages (the page size is the smaller, so easier to tote around), relies on ggplot2, monochrome with some color plates tacked on at the end, 2016, quite inexpensive
If you look at the ToC of the two, you'll see the differing emphasis. Both offer some preliminaries, and then diverge. Crawley offers the remaining chapters by stat/quant procedure, including GAM, Bayes, and survival analysis. Davies, on the other hand, views R as a programming language, so devotes more of the text to such concerns. The furthest he gets is multiple regression.
Davies is a contenda if your interest lies in programming R. If your interest is doing quant studies, you'll definitely need other sources.
It's about time for Crawley to make a 3rd, with a substantial chapter on ggplot2. That would make it a no brainer. Wiley shows it as out of stock, so may be.
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