R is a language and environment for statistical computing and graphics.It is a GNU project which is similar to the S language and environmentwhich was developed at Bell Laboratories (formerly AT&T, now LucentTechnologies) by John Chambers and colleagues. R can be considered as adifferent implementation of S. There are some important differences, butmuch code written for S runs unaltered under R. R provides a wide variety of statistical (linear and nonlinearmodelling, classical statistical tests, time-series analysis,classification, clustering, ...) and graphical techniques, and is highlyextensible. The S language is often the vehicle of choice for researchin statistical methodology, and R provides an Open Source route toparticipation in that activity. One of R's strengths is the ease with which well-designedpublication-quality plots can be produced, including mathematicalsymbols and formulae where needed. Great care has been taken over thedefaults for the minor design choices in graphics, but the user retainsfull control.