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R

Brief description

R is an advanced software environment with a large number of pre-programmed statistical functions and graphics modules. It is a very powerful and flexible software package, which is being used increasingly often by linguists and communication scientists who depend on (complex) statistical analysis.

Manual

The manual An Introduction to R is available online. It is also available in HTML format on the R project website (see below), along with more specialized manuals.

Availability

R is not yet available for humanities students on VU pcs. It can be downloaded free of charge for home use via the project website (see below).

More information

The R Project for Statistical Computing
R can be downloaded on this website. You can also find extensive information about R here.

R Tutorial
This website includes an introduction to R, including examples of how to carry out basic statistical analysis.

Further remarks

Learning to work with R requires more effort than learning how to use SPSS, because the user interface of R is not menu-driven. This is one of the reasons that R has a steep learning curve.