R: An Open Source Software Environment for Statistical Analysis

Abstract

The research data and its efficient analysis play a vital role in successful research as well as in drawing meaningful inferences. Students, scholars, research institutes, Government and non-Government organizations around the World depend heavily on statistical and data analysis to carry out their research as well for taking decisions based on statistical analysis of data. Statistics plays a vital role in almost all domains of knowledge. This article provides an overview of various comprehensive, proprietary and non-proprietary statistical packages that are available in the market place for carrying out statistical analyses on data such as SPSS, Stata, Minitab, SAS, etc. The article especially focuses on non-proprietary and open source statistical package called R, which is widely used in all research domains for statistical analysis, data mining and data visualization across the world.