Add-On Packages

When you install R, you’re only installing the core set of functionality. You can already do quite a lot with this baseline R installation (e.g., a complete linear regression analysis), but you will usually need functionality provided by add-on packages to complete most real-world data analyses.

For example, the following list shows some common analyses for which you would typically use add-on packages (and some suitable packages).

• Treating missing data using multiple imputation
  • mice
  • Amelia
  • mi
• Structural equation modeling
  • lavaan
  • OpenMx
• Multilevel regression modeling
  • lme4
  • nlme
• For all but the most trivial data processing, manipulation, and visualization, the tidyverse packages are virtually obligatory.