rexplore: A tutorial to explore and learn R fundamentals.
Dr Vani Lakshmi R · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2026
rexplore is a self-contained, browser-based course in base R for learners with no programming background, laid out as the four panes of RStudio: a Source pane holding a lesson script, a Console in which lines run, an Environment pane that fills as objects are created, and Plots, Help, Lessons and Exercises. It runs from a single HTML file with no installation, server or internet connection. Every one of the 1,545 commands in its 68 lessons was run in R 4.3.3 during the build and its output, warnings, errors, plots and help pages were recorded exactly, so nothing shown is simulated. Fifteen sections carry the learner from the first assignment to generalized linear models: the language and its data structures (vectors, factors, matrices, arrays, lists and data frames), text, dates and random numbers, control flow and writing functions, reading and writing files of every common kind including deliberately broken ones, a data cleaning discipline worked through on two messy exports, tables, base graphics, probability distributions, classical tests, and statistical modelling through regression, ANOVA, contrasts, factorial and repeated-measures designs, analysis of covariance and generalized linear models for counts, proportions and binary outcomes. Around the console sit a 121-page tutorial, 110 exercises with automatic checking, a Help pane that explains any selected line before it runs (the statistical idea, each function, each argument used and each operator), four decision trees with non-parametric analogues, Learn from Errors with 82 recorded failures of which a third are silent, a glossary of every function used, downloadable scripts for the whole course, any section or any lesson that were themselves run end to end in R, and an optional live R session in the browser through webR. The deposit contains the resource (index.html), all data files as CSV, all R scripts, the accompanying manuscript, and the licence. The educational content is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0; the application source code is excluded and all rights are reserved. The resource is an independent educational project and is not affiliated with the R Foundation or Posit.