Much of the software listed here is free and open source with major contributions from - or developed entirely by - dedicated community members. I am grateful for the vast selection of reliable, high quality, and readily-available software that has been developed under this philopsophy.

R

  • R The R Project for Statistical Computing.

  • CRAN A major repository of contributed R packages.

  • Rstudio An integrated development environment (IDE) for R users. An open source project provided by the Posit company.

  • sf A comprehesive package for working with shapefiles and other geographic objects.

  • tidyverse Packages for data wrangling, plotting, and other fundamental data science tasks.

  • pbdR Packages for high-performance computing.

  • Rcpp Framework for integrating C++ into R.

  • R-Nimble Framework for constructing hierarchical models with compiled code for high performance.

  • LaplacesDemon Full-featured library for Bayesian computation.

Other Computing

  • Stan Declare Bayesian models and compile into fast executable programs that sample posterior by Hamiltonian Monte Carlo; integrates with R and some other general purpose languages.

  • OpenBUGS Linux variant of WinBUGS, one of the first (as far as I know) Bayesian modeling platforms that automate MCMC based on a user’s model specification.

  • The Julia Language A high-level and high-performance language for technical computing.

  • GNU Octave A scientific computing platform that is largely compatible with MATLAB, but is open source.

  • Wolfram Alpha Search engine that can compute integrals, limits, etc.

Math/Stat Document Tools

  • Latex System for preparing high quality documents. Especially useful for typsetting mathematical expressions.

  • beamer Package for making slides with Latex.

  • UMBCposter A Latex package for making posters. Developed and maintained by Dr. Rouben Rostamian at UMBC.

  • beamerposter Another Latex package for making conference posters.

  • TeXstudio IDE for authoring Latex documents.

  • pgf Latex package for technical graphics. Also see pgfplots.

  • Quarto Framework to generate articles, websites, books, and other documents with markdown and embedded R, Python, or Julia code.

Collaboration

  • Git Tool for source control management. Especially suitable for text-oriented material such as source code.

  • Codeberg: a free hosting service for Git projects which is maintained by a non-profit organization in Berlin.

  • The following are paid services that host Git projects Bitbucket, Github, GitLab. They each have a free tier with limited hosting of private projects and use of large file storage, but are a good option for enlisting collaborators who do not otherwise have an account.

  • Overleaf Collaboration environment for writing Latex documents. Provides a browser-based editor, and also supports Git to work outside of the editor.

  • Shared storage, for files other than source code: Box, DropBox, Google Drive.

Other Tools

  • Ubuntu A distribution of Linux maintained by the Canonical company. A number of variants are available such as a server edition and desktop editions with various window managers.

  • Arch Linux A distribution of Linux that follows a rolling release model. Good for keeping up with the most recent versions of packages. Also good for customization because the initial installation is minimal.

  • OBS Studio Capture your PC’s display, audio, and video for recording or streaming.

  • Audacity Audio recording, editing, and processing.

  • Flowblade Video editing.

  • GIMP Image editing.

  • dwm Extremely lightweight and minimalist tiling window manager for X11. Also see dwl for Wayland.

  • tmux Persistent terminal sessions that can be detached/attached and split into multiple panes. Here is a cheat sheet with some useful commands and keybindings.

  • Vim Well-estabished text editor that can be used in non-graphical terminal environments. Tedious edits can often be accomplished with a small number of commands or keystrokes. A cheat sheet can be helpful to keep nearby.

  • Emacs An alternative to Vim which has a different feel.

  • Slurm A scheduler to queue up computing jobs and run them as processors become available. Useful for running large simulations which can require hours or days. Most commonly used on multi-user systems and distributed computing clusters, but also useful on a PC.

  • Xournalpp Take handwritten notes on your computer which can be edited and maintained as files. Especially useful with a writing tablet such as the Wacom Intuous.

  • Write Another excellent program for handwritten notes by Stylus Labs. Appears to be free but not completely open source like Xournal.

Professional Associations

U.S. Census Bureau

  • Center for Statistical Research and Methodology Information about the center and technical reports.

  • Census Data Explorer Explore and download data from the decennial census, American Community Survey, and other public data releases.

  • TIGER/Line Shapefiles Shapefiles for states, counties, and other geographic entities in the United States. Useful for plotting and spatial statistics.

  • 2020 Census Data Products Description of data products from the 2020 Decennial Census which make use of new methods to protect confidentiality. The release status for each product is given here.

UMBC

Miscellaneous

  • M-Net One of the first public-access UNIX systems. Hosted by the Arbornet organization in Ann Arbor, Michigan.