R Programming Language Multiple Choice Questions on “History of R”.
1. _____ programming language is a dialect of S.
a) B
b) C
c) R
d) K
Answer: c
Clarification: S was initiated in 1976⁷ as an internal statistical analysis environment—originally implemented as Fortran libraries.
2. Point out the WRONG statement?
a) Early versions of the S language contain functions for statistical modeling
b) The book Programming with Data by John Chambers documents S version of the language
c) In 1993 Bell Labs gave StatSci (later Insightful Corp.) an exclusive license to develop and sell the S language
d) The book Programming with Data by IBM documents S version of the language
Answer: a
Clarification: Insightful sold its implementation of the S language under the product name S-PLUS.
3. In 2004, ________ purchased the S language from Lucent for $2 million.
a) Insightful
b) Amazon
c) IBM
d) TCS
Answer: a
Clarification: TIBCO is the current owner of the S language and is its exclusive developer.
4. In 1991, R was created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman in the Department of Statistics at the University of _________
a) John Hopkins
b) California
c) Harvard
d) Auckland
Answer: d
Clarification: In 1993 the first announcement of R was made to the public. Ross’s and Robert’s experience developing R is documented in a 1996 paper in the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics.
5. Point out the wrong statement?
a) R is a language for data analysis and graphics
b) K is language for statistical modelling and graphics
c) One key limitation of the S language was that it was only available in a commercial package, S-PLUS
d) C is a language for data and graphics
Answer: b
Clarification: In 1996, a public mailing list was created (the R-help and R-devel lists) and in 1997 the R Core Group was formed, containing some people associated with S and S-PLUS.
6. Finally, in _________ R version 1.0.0 was released to the public.
a) 2000
b) 2005
c) 2010
d) 2012
Answer: a
Clarification: Source code for the entire R system is accessible to anyone who wanted to tinker with it.
7. R is technically much closer to the Scheme language than it is to the original _____ language.
a) B
b) C
c) C++
d) S
Answer: d
Clarification: R’s semantics, while superficially similar to S, are quite different.
8. The R-help and _____ mailing lists have been highly active for over a decade now.
a) R-mail
b) R-devel
c) R-dev
d) R-del
Answer: b
Clarification: There is considerable activity on web sites like Stack Overflow as well.
9. Which of the following describes R language?
a) Free
b) Paid
c) Available for free trial only
d) Testing
Answer: a
Clarification: A major advantage that R has over many other statistical packages and is that it’s free.
10. The copyright for the primary source code for R is held by the ______ Foundation.
a) A
b) S
c) C
d) R
Answer: d
Clarification: It is published under the GNU General Public License version.