R is a programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics. It is widely used among statisticians and data scientists for developing statistical software and data analysis. R is known for its ability to handle large and complex data sets, and for its extensive library of statistical and graphical techniques. R has a large and active user community that contributes to its development and maintenance, and provides support through various online resources and forums.

One of the main strengths of R is its ability to handle and manipulate data. R has a wide range of functions for data import, cleaning, manipulation, and visualization. It also has a variety of statistical and machine learning techniques built-in and available through add-on packages. R's graphical capabilities are also noteworthy and it provides several libraries for creating high-quality graphics and visualizations, such as ggplot2, lattice and plotly.

R is open-source software, it can be downloaded and used free of charge and it runs on a variety of platforms including Windows, Mac, and Linux. It's widely used in many industries, including finance, healthcare, and social sciences. It's also commonly used in academics and research, and in data science, machine learning, and predictive analytics.