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R is an extremely popular, general-purpose programming language that is used in the social, physical, health, and financial sciences. R is free to use, open-source, and offers a robust set of tools for conducting various kinds of analyses, research, organizing data, and a whole lot more!
Compared to some programming languages, R is relatively easy to read and understand with the ability to expand its functionality. Additionally, the community of software developers using R is very large and there is an equally large number of freely available packages, add-ons, and environments that we can benefit from.
To get started using R, you will need to download and install R and RStudio. Both of these tools are 100% free to everyone in the world.
First, you need to download and install the R programming language itself. You can download R directly from the following website:
Second, most R users will want to download and install RStudio. RStudio is an application that provides a relatively use-friendly interface for working with R code, data, and analyses. After you have installed R, you can download and install RStudio from the following website: