Essential software for statistics

This web page is created for students in the Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science at the University of Waterloo. The aim is to present an overview of software packages which eventually will become essential or at least useful for statisticians.

This is an ongoing project and only part of the content on this page is actually written on behalf of the UWaterloo Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science. For topics we have not covered yet, we provide links to web pages and documents that we find useful.

The content specifically created for this web page so far is:

• Emacs and Eclipse (PDF)

• R introduction (PDF)

• Functions and methods (PDF)

• Tcl introduction (PDF) with R-Source

• TK geometry manager (PDF)

Integrated Development Environments (IDEs)

IDEs are used to add efficiency to the programming workflow. Many IDEs exist and their strengths are dependent on the programming language.

• UWaterloo: Emacs and Eclipse (PDF) can be used for most programming languages including R, C, Java, and also LaTeX.

• RStudio good R IDE that also integrates Sweave and knitR support.

LaTeX

LaTeX is a document preparation system which is used by many academics and students to write up their projects, assignments, publications and presentation slides.

Search the Internet for an introduction to LaTeX or read a book. Many good sources exist.

A popular book, based on Amazon ranking, is More Math Into LaTeX published by Springer, and for UWaterloo students available for free from the Springerlink website. The author made a set of free available videos for getting you easily started.

Once you have figured out the basics of LaTeX, inform yourself about:

• AUCTeX: a great LaTeX editing mode in Emacs

• ispell: spell checking with Emacs

• Beamer: writing presentation slides with LaTeX

• TikZ (PDF): creating graphics in LaTeX; TikZ examples

• LaTeXDraw: create graphics with a drawing program