R is the programming language created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Auckland.
Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman began developing R in the early 1990s at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The language’s name refers both to the first names of its creators and to its relationship with the S programming language, which was developed at Bell Laboratories for statistical computing.
R is designed for statistics, data analysis, and graphics. It includes language features for manipulating data, fitting statistical models, and producing plots, while its package system allows researchers and developers to share specialized tools. The Comprehensive R Archive Network, commonly called CRAN, became a major distribution point for those packages.
R is often confused with S because S influenced its design, but R is a separate implementation and is distributed as free software under the GNU General Public License. R is especially common in academic research, biostatistics, economics, and data visualization, where reproducible analysis and specialized statistical methods are important.