Chapter 1 Why R and RStudio?

Chapter justifying the use of R and RStudio

1.1 Why R and Not Another Statistical Program?

1.1.1 Statistical Programs versus Statistical Programming Language

• Statistical Programs
  • fixed menus
  • limited procedures (at least in the menus)
  • leads to compartmentalizing models (e.g. ANOVA, regression, GLM)
• Statistical Programming Languages (SPLs)
  • Turing complete: if you can create an algorithm you can program it
  • Very flexible
  • Integration of models: One model to rule them all!

R is a statistical programming language, which means it is a programming language designed specifically to do statistics.