Add chapter: why R?

[matt-dray]

Suggestion: add a chapter that explains the purpose of learning R. People should know why they're doing it; what the benefits are to them and the department (reproducibility, etc); why R and not some other language. These questions have come up a lot in my experience.

Fix: create a chapter that contains – but improves upon – elements from section 2 of https://matt-dray.github.io/beginner-r-feat-pkmn/ and references therein.

Question: should this 'why R' chapter be Chapter 1? This would require a separate issue to renumber the other chapters.

[matt-dray]

Maybe this could be an appendix instead.

[TomFranklin]

I agree that we need to motivate the topic of why people are learning it, for some people being asked to learn R can feel like a bit pointless. I think in the very introduction I'd like to see:

• What can I do with R (art of the possible type section)
• What will this guide specifically cover

And finally, to remove the text inside the Tip box at the bottom of the front page, changing it to "Learning R can be fun!" or something else, as suggested by @matt-dray

[matt-dray]

We put 'why R' right up top in the session that @adamrobinson361 and me did and I think it might actually be better if we're up-front with this stuff, rather than sticking it in an appendix as I mentioned above. Start with 'what the heck is the point of R?', focusing potentially on the error-prone workflows that come from the SQL-Excel-Word-copy-paste-paradigm.

Section 1.4 of the Knitting Club document also mentions this.

[TomFranklin]

I think this should be right up front on the first page and also to remove "R is better than excel" from it maybe?