What are R and RStudio

R

R is a programming language specifically designed to perform statistical work. It has been designed from the ground up with that goal in mind.
It is freely available for use and has a strong community of behind it.
One of its most exciting facilities is R-Markdown documents which allow you to combine the code for statistical computations together with your analysis into a single document, which leads to what is known as reproducible research.
A lot of the power of R comes from the various add-on packages that can be installed and enhance/customize the language’s capabilities. Whatever your particular data analysis needs are, changes are there’s a package for you.

RStudio is a user-friendly environment for working with the R language. The RStudio team offers a number of packages and prices, including a quite powerful free version.
While you can install RStudio on your own local machine, we will be using the RStudio Server setup, which allows us to manage the installation in one centralized location.
Most importantly our RStudio server can be accessed through standard web browsers from anywhere in the world as long as you have valid Hanover College credentials.