Introduction

This chapter sets out the aims of the book, the approach, what is covered in the book, and what is not. The chapter introduces the R and RStudio software packages. It also summarizes the changes made to the second edition of the book. The book starts by introducing several different variations of the basic linear-model analysis (analysis of variance, linear regression, analysis of covariance, etc.). The later part of the book covers generalized linear models (for data with non-normal distributions). The book ends by combining these two extensions into generalized linear mixed-effects models. To allow a learning-by-doing approach, the R code necessary to perform the basic analysis is embedded in the text along with the key output from R.