1.1 Why should we learn R?

R follows a type inference1 coding structure and provides a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques, including;

  • Linear and non-linear modelling
  • Univariate & Multivariate Statistics
  • Classical statistical tests
  • Time-series analysis/ Econometrics
  • Simulation and Modelling
  • Datamining-classification, clustering etc.
  • For computationally intensive tasks, C, C++, and Fortran code can be linked and called at run time.
  • R is easily extensible through functions and extensions, and the R community is noted for its active contributions in terms of packages.
# Number of R Packages
length(available.packages(repos = "http://cran.us.r-project.org")[, 1])
[1] 16024
  • Total 16024 packages and counting

  1. Type inference refers to the automatic deduction of the type of an expression in a programming language.↩︎