R is basically a programming language that combines standard programming capabilities with statistical analysis. This is a powerful language used widely for data analysis and statistical computing. This was originally developed by statisticians as an open-source alternative to expensive suites of statistical software like SAS and MATLAB. It is liked as Excel, able to execute sophisticated analyses and produce publication-quality graphs and tables.
This language was created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. R is named after the first names of the creators. The project was conceived in 1992 and a stable version release in 2000. R is supported by the R Foundation for Statistical Computing. R language is freely available under the GNU General Public License and widely used among statisticians and data miners.
R Programming is free and open-source meaning anyone can examine the source code. This helps everyone to fix bugs and add features without help of vendor. R can be considered as a computer program as well as a statistical programming language. The R programs will work on Windows, Macintosh or Linux.
The source code for the R software environment is written primarily in C, R and Fortran. R and its libraries implement a wide variety of statistical and graphical techniques. This includes linear and nonlinear modeling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis, classification, clustering, and others. R is easily extensible through functions and extensions. Many of R’s standard functions are written in R itself, which makes it easy for users to follow the algorithmic choices made.
R Programming allows to integrate with other languages (C/C++, Java, Python) and enables to communicate with many data sources like Excel, Access, SAS, Stata, SPSS, Minitab etc.
For computationally intensive tasks, C, C++ and Fortran code can be linked and called at run time. Advanced users can write C, C++, Java, .NET or Python code to manipulate R objects directly. R has stronger object-oriented programming facilities than most statistical computing languages.
R is very flexible and can be used to carry out unusual or non-standard procedures and is quick to adopt new procedures and innovations. It has libraries for almost everything that has been tried with other languages. It also has excellent graphics with a wide range of possibilities.
Another strength of R is static graphics, which can produce publication-quality graphs, including mathematical symbols. Dynamic and interactive graphics are available through additional packages. Rd package of R provides LaTeX like documentation format which is used to supply comprehensive documentation. Commonly used graphical Integrated Development Environment for R is R Studio.
Many organizations are using R programming extensively. Facebook uses R for analyzing the Face book status updates, its social network graph, and for predicting colleague interactions. Ford Motor Company uses R for statistical analysis and data-driven decision support. Google uses R to calculate ROI on advertising campaigns, to predict economic activity, to analyze effectiveness of advertisement and to improve the efficiency of online advertising. In Foursquare , R is important part of the technology stack behind their famed recommendation engine. Statisticians at John Deere use R for time series modeling and geospatial analysis in a reliable and reproducible way. These results are then integrated with Excel and SAP. Insurance giant Lloyd’s uses R for creating motion charts for providing analysis to investors. Microsoft uses R in their video gaming brand Xbox for matchmaking service . They also use R as a statistical engine in their Azure machine language framework. Mozilla, the foundation behind the Firefox web browser uses R to visualize Web activity. R is used in the news cycle at The New York Times to crunch data and prepare graphics before they go to print or online. Thomas Cook , a Tours and Travel company uses R for Prediction and fuzzy Logic to automate price settings of their last-minute offers. National Weather Service provides weather forecasts and warnings to US Government uses R to generate graphics for flood forecasting. R is part of Twitter’s Data Science toolbox for sophisticated statistical modeling and is used to monitor the user experience on the site. The fourth largest bank in Australia ANZ Bank use R for its credit risk modeling and analysis. Uber , the transportation company is using R for their statistical analysis. Airbnb a hospitality service company uses R for Scale data science.
In a recent survey among who are practicing Python in various organisations, 98.23 % mentioned that the expertise on R programming was acquired by studying with help of book along with constant practice. Of this, 89.72 % mentioned that the Book authored by Dr. Jeeva Jose “ Beginner’s Guide for Data Analysis using R Programming “ was used to study R programming as a tool in statistics for Data Analysis .
Created by: Mukul Seth
