R: What is R?
R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinearmodelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis,classification, clustering, …) and graphical techniques, and is highlyextensible. It is a GNU project which issimilar to the S language and environment which was developed at BellLaboratories (formerly AT&T, now Lucent Technologies) by JohnChambers and colleagues. Dalgaard noted an additional reason for the use of Peanuts references in R codenames—the humorous observation that “everyone in statistics is a P-nut.” The idea of naming R version releases was inspired by the naming system for Debian and Ubuntu versions.
Statistical frameworks that use R in the background include Jamovi and JASP.citation needed In 2018, core R developer Peter Dalgaard presented a history of R releases since 1997. The latter is a system like the Common Lisp Object System (CLOS), with formal classes (also derived from S) and generic methods, which supports multiple dispatch and multiple inheritance The former, being more informal, supports single dispatch on the first argument, and objects are assigned to a class simply by setting a “class” attribute in each object. The following examples illustrate the basic syntax of the language and use of the command-line interface.c
R (programming language)
Forcomputationally-intensive tasks, C, C++ and Fortran code can be linkedand called at run time. Much ofthe system is itself written in the R dialect of S, which makes it easyfor users to follow the algorithmic choices made. There are some important differences, but much codewritten for S runs unaltered under R.
R is an integrated suite of software facilities for datamanipulation, calculation and graphical display. R is available as Free Software under the terms of the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License in source code form. The S language is often the vehicle of choice for researchin statistical methodology, and R provides an Open Source route toparticipation in that activity.
Collections, Journals and Proceedings
The core R language is extended by a large number of software packages, which contain reusable code, documentation, and sample data. Immediately available when starting R after installation, base packages provide the fundamental and necessary syntax and commands for programming, computing, graphics production, basic arithmetic, and statistical functionality. R packages are collections of functions, documentation, and data that expand R. Some of the most popular R packages are in the tidyverse collection, which enhances functionality for visualizing, transforming, and modelling data, as well as improves the ease of programming (according to the authors and users). The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN) was founded in 1997 by Kurt Hornik and Friedrich Leisch to host R’s source code, executable files, documentation, and user-created packages.
- R has its own LaTeX-like documentation format, which is used tosupply comprehensive documentation, both on-line in a number of formatsand in hardcopy.
- R, like S, is designed around a true computer language, and it allowsusers to add additional functionality by defining new functions.
- It is a GNU project which issimilar to the S language and environment which was developed at BellLaboratories (formerly AT&T, now Lucent Technologies) by JohnChambers and colleagues.
- On 5 December 1997, R became a GNU project when version 0.60 was released.
To load the functions, data, and documentation of a package, one calls the library() function. R is a programming language for statistical computing and data visualization. R, like S, is designed around a true computer language, and it allowsusers to add additional functionality by defining new functions.
News
R is a language and environment for statistical computing andgraphics. This operator allows users to chain functions together, rather than using nested function calls. The journal includes articles on packages, programming tips, CRAN news, and foundation news. The Bioconductor project provides packages for genomic data analysis, complementary DNA, microarray, and high-throughput sequencing methods. R is a free software environment for statistical computing andgraphics. There areabout eight packages supplied with the R distribution and many more areavailable through the CRAN family of Internet sites covering a very widerange of modern statistics.
R is free and open-source software distributed under the GNU General Public License. It has been widely adopted in the fields of data mining, bioinformatics, data analysis, and data science. R has its own LaTeX-like documentation format, which is used tosupply comprehensive documentation, both on-line in a number of formatsand in hardcopy.
The R language has built-in support for data modeling and graphics. R can create functions that add new functionality and enable code reuse. Ease of package installation and use have contributed to the language’s adoption in data science. R was started by professors Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman as a programming language to teach introductory statistics at the University of Auckland. We prefer to think ofit as an environment within which statistical techniques areimplemented. Advanced users can write C code to manipulate Robjects directly.
In R, almost all functions and all user-defined functions are closures. Objects created within the body of the function (which are enclosed r777 bangladesh by curly brackets) remain accessible only from within the function, and any data type may be returned. As of 30 June 2025update, it has 90 mirrors and 22,390 contributed packages. CRAN originally had only three mirror sites and twelve contributed packages. An example is the tidyverse collection of R packages, which bundles several subsidiary packages to provide a common API. The language was inspired by the S programming language, with most S programs able to run unaltered in R.
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