This assignement briefly identifies the development of R as a free and open sourced program thats primary use is that of statistics and data visualization.
What is R?
R is an interactive and open sourced programming software used by data scientists, statisticians, students and many businesses to communicate data in a visually-pleasing way. R was first officially released on February 29, 2000 and is controlled by 20 statisticians and computer scientists from around the world.
In 1995, R was released as an open sourced software, meaning, anyone in the world with internet access was/is able to access and download the R program and can contribute content for free in the R community (CRAN.)
CRAN- Comprehensive R Archive Network was founded by the R contributors to be an outlet for R users to upload and publish free content to used by anyone with the R program. In order to use CRAN, users’ content packages must meet distinct requirements and licenses set by the R Foundation.
BENEFITS OF USING THE R SOFTWARE
R can be used on different hardwares/softwares such as: Windows, MAC and Linux making it truly accessible to most.
R has a rich online community that provides assistance to those who are novices to the program as well as those that are seasoned.
R is rich in graphics, data manipulation and statistical modelling. Although R has a steep learning curve as opposed to Excel, which is mainly point and click, R eliminates the tedious steps of the back and forth which may be a hindrance to working effectively.
Lastly, because of R’s vast capabilities, it has attracted users from different educational backgrounds that, can in turn. contribute their expertise to the R community in the form of packages.
Documents can be found The Open Source R Programming Language is Becoming Pervasive by Revolutions here and Why R? The pros and cons of the R language by Paul Krill here