R is a popular programming language used by data scientists. As opposed to other statistical packages, such as SAS, SPSS, and Stata, R is a free software environment mostly used for statistical computing and graphics. R is a similar language to the S language from Bell Labs. According to R’s website, Martin Mächler of ETH Zurich convinced the creators of R to release R as free software. R’s source code was made available for free in 1995 under the terms of the Free Software Foundation’s GNU general license. Word of mouth about R allowed the creators of R to switch from a mailing list to newsgroups because the number of users was growing rapidly. As of January 2019, R is the 12th most popular programming language in the TIOBE index.
It is remarkable that R is free since it is one of the most powerful statistical packages available. R allows for many different methods of ANOVA and regression, and provides support for charts and diagrams. One can also use R for data mining. R’s data structures include vectors, matrices, arrays, data frames and lists.
Users can create packages for R, which allow for specialized statistical techniques. Users can also connect on forums and websites to connect with each other about R. There are also meet-ups for R users. Since R is free, it is clearly more accessible and convenient for people to use than other statistical packages. There’s also an annual R conference called userR!. In addition, there is also The R Journal, which is an open access, adjudicated journal of the R project for statistical computing.