R Project is a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics supported by the R Core Team and the R Foundation for Statistical Computing. The R language is widely used among statisticians and data miners for developing statistical software and data analysis. 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 R Project was started in 1993 by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. The goal of the project was to create a free software environment for statistical computing and graphics that would be similar in scope to the S language and environment which was developed at Bell Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now Lucent Technologies) by John Chambers and colleagues.
R is a GNU project, which means that it is free software released under the GNU General Public License (GPL). This means that R can be freely used, modified, and redistributed. R is also open source software, which means that the source code is available for anyone to inspect and modify.
R is a powerful tool for statistical computing and graphics. It is used by statisticians, data miners, and researchers in a wide variety of fields, including biology, economics, finance, medicine, and social sciences. R is also used by students and researchers in academic institutions around the world.
R is a growing and active community. There are many resources available for R users, including books, tutorials, and online forums. The R Project website provides a comprehensive resource for R users, including documentation, a package repository, and a mailing list.
