For the better or worse, the times when statistics was done with pen, paper and a calculator are over. Statistical analysis nowadays happens on the computer, and a number of software environments exist to do so. In the ecological sciences, R is the de-facto standard for statistical analysis. R is open-source, free, and has a very larger user base, specially in the environmental sciences, that contribute packages for specialised ecological and environmental analysis.

R is script-based language, which means that you communicate with the computer not by clicking on buttons, but by writing commands either directly in the R console, or first in a text file and then sending it to the R console, which is then evaluating your commands. If you aren’t used to this kind of approach yet, it may take a short while to get used to this, but once you are used to it, you will notice how advantageous it is to have all steps of your analysis listed in a text file, being able to repeat everything at any moment.

In the drop-down menu R, you find some basic introduction to using R. This introductions only cover non-statistical topics such as data manipulation, plotting etc. For statistical analyses, consult the Stats menu.