A Tutorial on Loops in R – Usage and Alternatives

r-tutorials
scripting-tutorials
machine-learning
Published

May 2, 2016

In this easy-to-follow R tutorial on loops we will examine the constructs available in R for looping, and how to make use of R’s vectorization feature to perform your looping tasks more efficiently. We will present a few looping examples; then criticize and deprecate these in favor of the most popular vectorized alternatives (amongst the very many) available in the rich set of libraries that R offers.

Read the full tutorial on DataCamp →

First published on DataCamp, July 23, 2015.

Who am I?

Physicist and data scientist, 25+ years across applied physics (plasma, materials) and data science / ML — now working under one consulting practice.

Independent data-science and analytics consulting (2013–2016; 2021–2023). Head of a Data Science R&D Lab (2019–2021). Senior Data Scientist and consultant roles (2017–2019) across telecom, industrial, and public-sector clients. Since 2023, I lead applied energy-systems modeling work — combining physics-based device models with grid analytics and planning — for renewable-energy R&D in the UAE.

Co-author, The PyPSA Handbook (Elsevier, 2025).

Current interests: Symbolic Regression, Time series and IoT.

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