R behind the scenes: Using S the (un)usual way
Friedrich Leisch · Open access LMU (Ludwid Maxmilian's Universitat Munchen) · 2007
R is not only a program for analyzing and visualizing data, it is anopen and programmable software environment. It can not only easilyaccess other programs written in a wide variety of languages, but alsobe accessed itself from other programs. As such, it can be seen as thecomputational Swiss army knife of statistics. Connecting a program toR can be surprisingly simple, and once the connection is established,the perhaps largest existing collection of statistical methodology isavailable through a unified interface. Embedding R can save a lot ofhuman time by automating routine tasks, but more importantly, it oftengives a simple way of making our methods accessible to a much wideraudience.