R Is Niche, But It's The Language Every Statistician Actually Uses
How-To Geek, Saturday, April 18th, 2026
While Python is my primary programming language for statistical analysis, I'm picking the other major language, R, even though it's considered niche. Here are the reasons why.
One thing I love about Python is the large number of packages available. My favorite packages have to do with statistics, such as NumPy, SciPy, and statsmodels. Since R is so widely used in statistical research, there are lots of packages I can install.
Browsing through CRAN, or the Comprehensive R Archive Network, I can find thousands of packages to install. The "task views" also let me install packages through themes.