
2
Software Essentials
This chapter introduces the R system (Section 2.1), additio nal packa ges for R (Section 2.2), and the
spatstat package for analysing spatial point patterns (Section 2.3).
2.1 Introduction to R
The analyses of spatial point pattern data that w e present in this book are all conducted in the R
software system for statistical c omputing and graphics [353].
There are my riad reasons for ch oosing R, as an article in the New York Times explained [666].
It is free software, easy to install and to run on virtu ally all platforms. Basic co mmands are easy to
learn. It is a powerful computing system, with all the advantages of deep-lev ...