I'm assuming you mean i in place of r...
<<n means "shift left by n* bits". Since you start with 1=binary 00...00001, if you shift left 4 times you get binary 00...10000 = 16 (it helps if you are familiar with binary arithmetic - otherwise "calc.exe" has a binary converter).
Each bit moves left n places, filling (on the right) with 0s. *=note that n is actually "mod 32" for int, so (as a corner case) 1 << 33 = 2, not 0 which you might expect.
There is also >> (right shift), which moves for the right, filling with 0 for uints and +ve ints, and 1 for -ve ints.