Modern science requires modern statistical methods:
Statisticians develop new methods and often make them first available as packages in R.
No need to wait until these methods are programmed into SPSS.
S was a programming language for statistics developed by John Chambers (Bell Labs) in the 1970s-80s.
It had two primary implementations:
Now R is known as “a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.”
Current R developments are streamlined by non-profit organisation The R Project for Statistical Computing at https://www.r-project.org/.
The project supports a large and continuously growing community of users and package developers:
CRAN (Comprehensive R Archive Network) at https://cloud.r-project.org/ is a central repository for R language interpreter and R packages.
It also contains manuals and mailing lists (well indexed on google).
Free download. New major version every year, minor versions in between.
RStudio from https://rstudio.com/ is an open source integrated development environment for programming in R language.
It provides useful features to help in development of the R code and in organization of projects.
RStudio is not necessary to work with R programs, but it is highly recommended and is used in this course.
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