Introduction of the software R to do research in finance and social sciences (statistical computing and graphics...)

1. Jérémy Morvan
Assistant professor
Université de Bretagne Occidentale
jeremy.morvan@univ-brest.fr
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2. Assistant professor in finance in a
French university
Main research topics
 Performance of SRI funds
 Covered bonds
 Financial crises
Université
de Bretagne
Occidentale
is here, at
Brest !
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3. R is an open source software for
statistical computing and graphics
R provides a large variety of
statistical and graphical techniques,
and is very extensible
R is increasingly used by researchers
and data analysts
The R community can help you if
necessary
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4. R comes with a standard set of
packages
 The capabilities of R are extended
through packages,
 Packages are collections of functions and
data (to try the new functions) which
allow more statistical techniques, and
graphical devices
 +10,000 additional packages (in 2017) are
available for download
 Once installed, packages have to be
loaded into the session to be used.
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5. Task Views are guides on CRAN that
group sets of R packages and
functions by type of analysis, fields,
or methodologies
 Econometrics
 Finance
 Genetics
 Biology
 Psychology
 …
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6. RStudio is a free and open-source
integrated development
environment (IDE) for R
RStudio makes R easier to use,
especially if you are a beginner
RStudio limits the number of column
to 100
RStudio has a channel on Youtube
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7. 7R without RStudio

8. Dataviewer
Source editor for writing script
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Code editor
Workspace (data, values…)
Pane for plots
Package management
Help
R with RStudio

9.  You must perform the same
analysis several times ?
 But you are a little lazy or you like
to optimize…
 A script is a a text file (.txt) containing all
your commands that you would enter on
the command line one by one
 You can write a script with
 MS Notepad
 A better solution is Notepad++
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10. Many references are available online,
free of charge
 CRAN web site, where you can download
R and packages
 Video-sharing website where skilled users
show the capabilities of R
 R-bloggers is blog aggregator of content
contributed by users who write about R
 All packages are (very well) described
 Example : reference manual of the
package fBasics here
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11.  A task view is dedicated to finance
 It contains a list of packages useful for
empirical research in finance
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12.  Many books are available,
especially in social sciences
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A must-read book !

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