Install latest R to ~/.local.

installr.sh

#!/bin/bash

R_VERSION="3.2.5"

wget https://cran.r-project.org/src/base/R-3/R-$R_VERSION.tar.gz
tar -xvf R-$R_VERSION.tar.gz
rm R-$R_VERSION.tar.gz
cd R-$R_VERSION

# If ~/.local/bin doesn't exist, create it:
if [ ! -d "$HOME/.local/bin" ]; then
        mkdir -p $HOME/.local/bin
fi

./configure --prefix=$HOME/.local/
make
make install

# If ~/.local/bin is not already in $PATH, add it:
if ! [[ ":$PATH" == *":$HOME/.local/bin:"* ]]; then
        echo "Adding ~/.local/bin to PATH"
        echo "export PATH="\$HOME/local/bin:\$PATH"" >> ~/.bashrc
        source ~/.bashrc
fi

rm -r R-$R_VERSION
echo "Installation complete"

Instructions

At the command line, enter:
curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/walshc/28fb754ea9ff95fbae7c6f3b14ac15de/raw/cdca7b9894ef8c458a7fd00a4c83e1bd819d362a/installr.sh | sh