What Is R? A Beginner’s Guide
R is a popular open-source programming language built for statistics, data analysis, and visualization. Created by statisticians, R provides tools designed to make data work — from cleaning and modeling to publication-ready visualizations.
Why R exists
R was developed to make statistical computing intuitive. Instead of forcing data into general-purpose programming paradigms, R has native data structures and functions that match analysis workflows.
Core strengths
- Rich statistical and modeling functions
- Powerful visualization with
ggplot2 - Extensive package ecosystem (CRAN)
- Reproducible research workflows
🧠 Quick example
Create a simple numeric vector and view its summary:
scores <- c(88, 92, 75, 91, 85)
summary(scores)
Who uses R?
R is widely used by researchers, data scientists, statisticians, sports scientists, and analysts across academia, healthcare, finance, and government.