2.2 Why Use R Markdown instead of Sweave?

  • No need to learn Latex!

  • Formatting is a little quicker: # Section Header instead of \section{Section Header}

  • Easily output to multiple formats, quickly tweak a pdf report to make slides

  • Lots of development work is being done to support document creation in R Markdown:

  • The bookdown package allows you to create gitbooks (like this document) and ebooks (EPUB and MOBI), in addition to the regular HTML, Word, and PDF formats

  • The xaringan package creates great looking presentation slides, with timers, notes, presenter mode and screen cloning

  • the Shiny package is great for interactive statistics and graphs

  • Blogdown for producing websites

  • OpenDocuments, html & pdf slide presentations, lecture handouts read here for more information

    ⏯ If you know Sweave, picking up Markdown is easy!