Beginning R
R is a unique object-oriented language designed specifically for statistics. However, it’s also extremely versatile and has a large community dedicated to developing open-source content. This means that R’s versatility extends beyond statistics to other mathematical applications, graphical representation of data, and interfacing with other coding languages. If you’re not familiar with coding there’s a bit of a learning curve ahead of you (but probably not more so than you would have for any other coding language). If you are completely unwilling to learn coding but need to perform statistics I’d encourage you to look into some of the GUIs (graphical user interfaces) available for R before defaulting to other software (SPSS, SAS, etc.). There are many reasons why R should be used instead of other software but my biggest reasons are as follows: It’s free: As a poor student this has been a huge benefit to me but has far reachi...