Free online resources to learn statistics and basic R coding

In my book I don't go a great length in covering statistical concepts or in teaching the reader the required (very) basic knowledge of R. That is because there already is plenty of self-learning material available on the internet, and also because knowledge of math and statistics is not strictly necessary to apply what I show in the book. Still, it doesn't hurt to learn some statistics to get a deeper understanding of portfolio optimization, and you might want some directions regarding introductory R manuals.

R for Beginners, written by Emmanuel Paradis, is the first R manual I read when I started learning R. I think it does a good job in quickly teaching the reader the most basic concepts. It is quite short, and it's not a bad idea to read all of it. However, if you really only want to learn what is strictly necessary to implement the strategies I describe in the book, it is probably enough to skim through chapters 2, 3 and 6.
If you want to get serious about R programming, it is then a must to visit the R-bloggers website. It collects thousands of useful posts from a very large number of bloggers, and it also has a Learn R section with links to all sort of R guides and manuals.

You also need to get familiar with RStudio if you want to use it (and I think you should). Luckily, this is very straighforward. These slides provided by Princeton University take only a few minutes to read, and are enough to jump start a first time user.

Now, let's get at statistics. This online textbook by Hossein Pishro-Nik covers a good amount of material and is a good read for a beginner. Statlect is also nice, although because of the way it's structured I would use it more as reference to look up to single concepts rather than as a textbook to read one chapter after another.
Finally, if you want to learn something about forecasting, which is not directly related to the material in the book, but is definitely useful to know, you can check this book from Rob J. Hyndman and George Athanasapoulos.

You can always find the links to the resources presented here in the "Useful links" list in this blog.

Websites with calculators, formulas and definitions that make life easier

Sometimes you just need to have right at hand the right formula, or the exact definition, or to have a calculator that spares you from wasting time on boring computations. I'm going to present you the three websites that have been most useful for me.

The Financial terms dictionary provided by Investopedia.com is a great resource that provides precise definitions for hundreds of financial terms, together with many useful formulas. When you are confused about or unfamiliar with some concept, there's a good chance this dictionary can really help you solve your doubts.

financeformulas.net is incredibly useful when you quickly need to find out the right formula to compute some popular financial ratio or indicator. Formulas are divided into categories: general finance, banking, stocks/bonds, corporate finance, financial markets. It's definitely good to have this website in you browser's bookmarks.

Finally, buyupside.com features a lot of calculators and analyzers, provided by retired college professor and investor Richar A. Howard. The tools include calculators to compute compound interest rates, inflation rate, investment fees, and many more.

You can now find these three websites in the "Useful links" list on the right side of the blog.