R is an open-source statistical programming language. It is available from the following website: R-Cran. You should install R on you laptop. For us it is probably best to use the following link. You can also install R-Studio which is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for R.
R is one of the main programmable statistical languages. Others include:
Stata: Use in academic econometrics. This is not open source.
Matlab: Used extensively in academic finance. It is not open-source. There is an open-source clone called Octave. It can be downloaded here.
Python: Computer Language for statistical programming.
Julia: New language that is faster than R
C++ Programming language. Underneath R is C++ in some cases.
The main advantages of using an open-source statistical programming languages like R are:
It can be used by anyone for no cost. Your model will not depend on the next institution having the same software licence
Programming language will encourage reproducible research
Reproducible Research means that results can be easily replicated. This means
Mistakes are less likely to happen than would be the case with copy and paste
Mistakes can be more swiftly identified
Changes to data or research methods are easier to make
Some additional information on R, R-Studio and Reproducible Research