ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces specific foundational information about the R language and environment as it relates to the analysis of fisheries data. The learning curve for the R language and environment is initially somewhat steep. Much more thorough introductions to the R language and environment have been done well by many other authors and should be consulted for more details. The command line interface requires the user to type instructions, rather than select options from a menu. R is extensible in that new methods, either broadly within statistics or specific to an applied field, can be delivered as they are developed. R is open-source which broadly means that the source code for the software can be examined by the user. Finally, R is free, which makes it available to a very large set of users. Some calculations require the user to iteratively insert a variety of values into an expression or function.
