3 R as a Calculator

At its most basic, R can be used as a calculator. For instance:

# calculates 2+2
2+2

## [1] 4

# calculates 65 to the power of 4
65^4

## [1] 17850625

While this is a useful starting point, the possibility of assigning values to objects (or variables) considerably increases the scope of the operations we are able to carry out. We turn to object assignment in the next sub-section.