73 R: Statistical Software
{#sec:r}
There is an excellent selection of very high quality statistical software available for Debian GNU/Linux. A favourite is R, an open source version of S/SPlus, widely used in the academic statistical community.
The R packages from CRAN (the Comprehensive R Archive Network) are packaged in quite a collection for Debian (but not all are included yet), and you may want to pick and choose, or just install the whole lot:
See the for examples of using R.
R itself also has a package management facility and you can install packages directly from CRAN:
The package will be downloaded and installed into
/usr/local/lib/R/site-library. This can live comfortably with
the Debian installed packages which live in
/usr/lib/R/site-library. The only problem is that a package
for Debian may come out and you will end up having duplication.
Emacs, provided by the emacs21 package,
with the additional ess package, provides an excellent
interface for working with R. To get started within emacs, simply
issue the command M-x R $<$enter$>$. This will ask for a
starting data directory which defaults to the current working
directory (if you simply press $<$enter$>$ again).
Alternatively, load in a file with a .R extension and the R mode will
be loaded. You will have a collection of convenient R buttons added to
your button bar, as in Figure ??.
Emacs ESS mode for interacting with R. {#fig:emacs-ess-mode}
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