R 3.1.1

R is a language and an environment for statistical computing and graphics. It provides a pretty large variety of statistical and graphical techniques that is highly extensible.

The R environment, which is what is available in this particular download, is an integrated suite of software facilities for manipulating data, as well as calculation and graphical display. This includes an effective data handling and storage facility, a nice suite of operators for calculations on arrays, a large integrated collection of intermediate tools for data analysis, graphical facilities for data analysis, and an effective programming language which includes conditionals, user defined recursive functions, and loops.

R allows it's users to add more functionality by defining new functions. Stated clearly as being a dialect of the S language, it is easy for users to understand the algorithmic choices made. An interesting addition to everything else stated, for computationally intensive tasks, C, C++, and Fortran can be linked and/or called when ran and more advanced users can write C to manipulate the R code directly.

Many of the users that have used R think of it as a statistics system, but the R Project team likes to think of it as an environment that statistical techniques are implemented. It can easily be extended using packages. Having more than eight packages supplied with this distribution of R, there are many more available through the CRAN sites which cover a wide range of modern statistics.