“R” is a very powerful statistical and graphing package originally developed in 1996 as a free version of S-Plus. Since then the original team has expanded to become known now as “R core group” (https://www.r-project.org/contributors.html) the include dozens of individuals from all over the globe. R is a GNU project, which means that it is “Open Source” and is available as free software under the terms of the Free Software Foundation’s GNU General Public License – which is a key advantage over many other statistical software.  In addition it is available for a variety of operating systems, including Windows, Apple MacOS as well as several flavours of Linux.  R is very powerful: it easily matches or even surpasses SAS or Stata, with over 5000 specialized modules (called “packages”) available.  Researchers around the world write their own procedures in R, and there are many sites on the internet with tutorials or discussion boards where you can seek help. To get R, visit the R Project homepage (http://www.r-project.org) and follow the links.