Statistical Software Packages

For those of you who are interested in statistics, and this can include all of the students looking at this blog, there are a number of ways of learning how to manipulate and use all kinds of data. Unfortunately, most of the software programs designed to do this cost significant sums of money, and are not always available to those of us without some serious cash - thousands of dollars.

OK, what to do if you don't have that type of funding? Well, there's an excellent open source (that means free) statistical software package that's available to all of us, to use and experiment with as we see fit. It's called R, and can be downloaded onto any PC or Apple computer easily enough. Go to the website www.r-project.org/. You'll find a link to download the latest version of the software. (If you're a student and your parents like to know what you're doing, this is something you can be proud to show them, BTW.) The download link will show you several sites from which you can access the software. Choose the one closest to you. Most are university sites, and they'll give you the fastest download. Then just run the appropriate install program and you'll be good to go.

If you've never worked with this type of software before, do a little reading on how to use command prompt programs. You can get information on this at a library, along with books describing the software, how to use it, and lots of demos. The book I'm using right now is "R in a Nutshell", by Joseph Adler. I've just started working my way through this material, so I'll have more to say as I go along.

Keep in mind that the R project updates the program about twice a year at the present time. This is no problem for most users, as the things that get changed tend to be for advanced users, and the majority of us won't notice it all for a few years. The version I have is R2.11.1, and I expect that to hold me for quite a while.

Right now, all I can say is enjoy playing with R. It's a neat package, and will really help anyone taking a statistics class, or anyone just interested in statistics and how to manipulate data.