What I Learned: R & RStudio
Some thoughts on my first experiences with R and RStudio.
Hi everyone,
For the past couple of months, I have been working to expand my skill set in data analytics. The CPA program, while obviously comprehensive in accounting, touches only lightly on data analytics despite the skill becoming increasingly important to the profession. In fact, the educational experience is closer to a few lessons on using PowerBI, a data visualization tool, rather than performing thorough data analysis. However, curious about the topic, I decided to enroll in the Google Data Analytics Professional Certification on Coursera.
This week, I finally reached the part I was most interested in: R and RStudio. If you’ve never heard of R, don't worry, until recently neither had I.
As a quick primer, R is a very popular open-source coding language used in academia and industry for data analytics. It's relatively simple to learn and powerful enough to handle substantial data volumes for robust analysis. Essentially, it's ideal for both heavy data analysis or light ad-hoc work.
Here are a few things financial professionals could do with R:
Data mining and analysis of both financial and non-financial data
Risk analysis
Financial reporting
Fraud detection
Report automation
Customer segmentation
Now, I'm little more than a beginner in this field. But the more I learn about data analytics and coding languages like SQL, Python, and R, the more I understand the extent to which modern accountants are significantly underskilled in areas that could greatly simplify their work. We have much to learn from our IT department colleagues. Widespread competency in these tools could not only reduce the tedious work accountants do through automation and lessen the over-reliance on Excel, but it could also improve process documentation practices, something developers are very good at.
How often has my computer crashed or slowed down while working with an Excel workbook containing 13 tabs and 900,000 rows of data? These issues could be mitigated if finance professionals were more adept with advanced tools.
If you’re interested in learning more about R, here are some resources for further reading.
Other resources: