R

The R Project for Statistical Computing (R) is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics.

R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinear modelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, ...) and graphical techniques, and is highly extensible.

The S language is often the vehicle of choice for research in statistical methodology, and R provides an Open Source route to participation in that activity.

R 2.10.1

Price Free to download Size 18.8MB License GNU GPL v2 Developer R Development Core Team Website www.r-project.org System Requirements Support Sites: R Manuals, Wiki, FAQ, Newsletter, Mailing List, R Graph Gallery, Kickstarting R, Journal of Statistical Software, Technical Notes on the R programming language, R_note, R Tips, Using R for Psychology Research, R Applications Selected Reviews: Sciviews.org, dmreview, Statland.org

R is an integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation and graphical display. It includes:

• An effective data handling and storage facility,
• A suite of operators for calculations on arrays, in particular matrices,
• A large, coherent, integrated collection of intermediate tools for data analysis,
• Graphical facilities for data analysis and display either on-screen or on hardcopy, and
• A well-developed, simple and effective programming language which includes conditionals, loops, user-defined recursive functions and input and output facilities.

One of R's strengths is the ease with which well-designed publication-quality plots can be produced, including mathematical symbols and formulae where needed.

R, like S, is designed around a true computer language, and it allows users to add additional functionality by defining new functions. Much of the system is itself written in the R dialect of S, which makes it easy for users to follow the algorithmic choices made.

Although R is mostly used by statisticians who need an environment for statistical computation and software development, it can also be used as a general matrix calculation toolbox with comparable benchmark results to Octave and its proprietary counterpart, MATLAB (version < 7).

There are a number of graphical frontends for R including:

	JGR rosuda.org/JGR JGR (speak 'Jaguar') is a Java GUI for R. Integrated editor with Syntax highlighting Autocompletion Direct command transfer Integrated multi tabbed help system 'Type-on' spreadsheet Console with autocompletion Object browser featuring Tabbed object view Model comparison Drag & Drop Direct 'Open' dialog for simple dataset loading
	R Commander socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr A platform-independent basic-statistics GUI (graphical user interface) for R, based on the tcltk package.
	RKWard rkward.sourceforge.net RKWard is a GUI frontend and IDE to R. It aims to provide useful features both to experienced users of R, wishing to exploit R's scripting capabilities, as well as to users new to R, looking for an easy way to carry out statistical computation tasks.

R also features in our 'Linux Equivalents to Windows Software' section. The category selector below allows you to filter the different types of software included in that separate article.

Last Updated Sunday, January 24 2010 @ 05:32 AM EST