Starting at the beginning. With the dinosaurs. When we rode them around to get to McDonalds.

What version of R to use?

Well, R version 3 just came out.  I wouldn't recommend it quite yet.  Try to download 2.15.3 if you can find it.  After you install it, I HIGHLY recommend installing R Studio after it (just google R studio download).  R Studio is a much nicer interface than the basic R program.  It looks nicer and makes doing most things just plain easier.

R Studio is just a front-end to R. So it actually uses the version of R that you have installed on your computer.  You cant just install R Studio, it wont work.

How does R work?

So R (the "base R") does a lot of stuff.  It isn't like SAS and SPSS though.  To do many things, you have to install various packages created by other users.  We will go over this later.

Are these packages reliable?

Yeah, I think so.  The R network requires a lot of legwork for someone creating a package, so anyone willing to do this is more than likely pretty reliable.  The benefit of packages is the flexibility of R.  Essentially, this allows you to do whatever you want - and any new method is pretty much immediately available in R.  SAS and SPSS take years to add some methods.

My favorite things about R
1) Graphics are incredible
2) Flexibility, like an olympic gymnast.
2) Yup, 2 again.  R rules.
3) Once the languages "clicks" with you, it becomes pretty intuitive.  This can take some time though.
4) User created packages allow for immediate implementation of all kinds of useful functions.
5) Since I mentioned functions - you can write functions in R.  A function is just a fancy word for a computer program that does whatever you want.  We will talk about this in depth later.  I may ask my pal Dr. Kelley write this section (I may have to start calling him Dr. Special K... it has a better ring to it).
6) It's free

Why I hate R
Yup, daily I pretty much hate R too.  Its a love-hate thing.
1) It can be very complicated if you want to do fancy stuff
2) It has a decent learning curve (unless you learn how to use it from me)
3) You need a bunch of packages to do a lot of stuff - it can be hard to remember which package does what.
4) All of the documentation online is written by people that make everything overly complicated.  This is extremely frustrating.

Take that.  Next posting will be how to read in your data.  The most important part.