R: an opensource system for statistics and data exploration
John A. Kapenga, Joseph W. McKean, Peter A. Gustafson · 55th AIAA/ASME/ASCE/AHS/ASC Structures, Structural Dynamics, and Materials Conference · 2014
An overview of the open source statistical package R is presented. R’s unusual history as an open source package and what has made it successful is reviewed. This includes R’s open source nature, wide feature set, quality, amazing documentation, support, stability, ever expanding usage, simple extension by adding new packages and easy distribution of independently developed packages. These all make R viable as a core tool in many environments. A demonstration on how R can be applied to a real world experiment and data is given. Finally, an indication is given of some lessons in open source system developent and stainability.