R

The main site for R is www.r-project.org.

Many R resources are available only by first selecting a CRAN mirror.

CRAN is an acronym for "Comprehensive R Archive Network". The CRAN mirror (link) at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) is a reasonable first choice for most users in the United States. CRAN mirrors in other countries are also available.

R comes with a broad set of statistical, data management, and graphical tools with its Base package. Beyond the base R package, there are many contributed packages that extend R's functionality. A complete (and dynamic) list of R contributed packaged is available here.

Helpful groupings of related R packages are available via the Task Views at (link).

Here is a link to a short video of the head of the NIST Statistical Engineering Division, Dr. Antonio Possolo, giving a testimonial to R during the useR! 2010 conference.

For some interesting comments from the R Core Development team (and assorted others), see the R-fortune.pdf file attached at the bottom of Quotes.