Editing User:Aaronshaw/Stats course (section)

== Why this course? Why statistical programming? Why R? ==

Many comparable courses in statistics and quantitative methods do not focus on statistical programming and use easier-to-learn statistical software than R. So why bother? By learning statistical programming you will gain a deeper understanding of both the principles behind your analysis techniques as well as the tools you use to apply those techniques. In addition, a solid grasp of statistical programming will prepare you to create reproducible research, avoid common errors, and enable both greater durability and validity of your work. 

Other programming languages are also well suited to statistics, including Stata and Python. Ultimately, I teach (and use) R for a few reasons:
* R is freely available and open source.
* R is becoming the most widely used package in statistics and many social science fields.
* R (along with Stata) will be used in most other advanced stats classes I hope you will take after this course.
* R is better general purpose programming language than software like Stata which means that R programming skills will let you solve non-statistical problems and will make it easier to learn other programming languages like Python.