ABSTRACT
R is a computer language and environment for statistical computing and graphics, similar to the S language developed at the Bell Laboratories by John Chambers and others. Initially, R was developed by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman in the 1990s as a substitute teaching tool to the commercial version of S, the S-Plus. The “R Core Team” was formed in 1997, and the team maintains and modifies the R source code archive at R’s home page (https://www.r-project.org/). The core of R is an interpreted computer language. It is a free software distributed under a GNU-style copyleft,1 and an official part of the GNU project (“GNU S”). Because it is a free software developed for multiple computer platforms by people who prefer the flexibility and power of typing-centric methods, R lacks a common graphical user interface (GUI). As a result, R is difficult to learn for those who are not accustomed to computer programming.
