1 R and Rstudio

For general computations and associated documentation, the statistical programming language R has become a popular choice. The R programming environment (a) is available on all major platforms (Mac, PC, unix/linux), (b) has many easy-to-use (and many not-so-easy-to-use) built-in functions for plotting data, generating curves, manipulating matrices, etc., and best of all (c) is freely available for download over the internet.

Note that R can be run from a console window, or can be run as a separate application on your computer. One of the official “GUI”s for R is Rstudio, which allows one to call R, edit files, make plots, etc., all within a single window on the computer. Rstudio is highly recommended, as it has panes and tabs and control panels for many commonly used functions.

For information and free downloads, visit http://r-project.org and https://www.rstudio.com/.