今天需要做统计数据分析的人大概很少有人会没有听说过R软件，因为现在在全世界每天都有成千上万的人在用R做统计分析。

R 软件诞生满三十年啦。上周二（2022年4月12日）新西兰毛利电视台因此对R 软件的两位原创开发人之一的Ross Ihaka博士作了一个简短的专访报道。相关的视频及文字报道的链接为：Read the full article here 。

在我的博文科学网—钢铁是这样练成的：我在新西兰获得数理统计专业硕博学位的经历分享 - 谢钢的博文 (sciencenet.cn)中我提到过我在新西兰奥克兰大学读统计学硕士学位（1997，1998两年）的经历。R 软件的两位原创开发人Ross Ihaka 和Robert Gentleman都给我上过课。Ross更是我的小科研项目的指导教师，并且是我2011年博士论文口试评委之一。

按照新西兰毛利电视台对Ross 的专访报道所说，R 软件诞生于1990年代初。但是我在奥克兰大学两年的硕士课程里用得最多的统计软件是Ross教我们的SPlus - 在Unix平台上做统计分析。因为R与SPlus同为S语言的变种，而且表面上R与SPlus的编码（syntax）几乎完全相同，所以我从1999年在奥克兰Middlemore hospital做统计分析开始用R就差不多是“无师自通”了。但1999年的时候R仍然是beta version试用版。如此看来，R 软件也是经历了至少八年的时间（2000年后）才推出正式的使用版。中国的那句老话‘好事多磨’实在不假。

在毛利电视台的采访对话中我们可以知道Ross是在美国加州大学伯克利分校拿的统计学博士学位，他最近刚刚退休（查英文维基百科得知Ross出生于1954年；新西兰的法定退休年龄是65岁）。因此，采访最后的话题是关于Ross对自己退休生活有什么打算，主持人问：“Many computers around or?”（会有很多计算机在你的身旁吗？）Ross的回答是：“I might have a computer, but the idea would be to get off-line as much as possible when get back to the real world.” （一台计算机嘛可能会要的，但退休了就想尽量不花时间在网上(因学术研究所必须打交道的虚拟世界)而是回归到（自然的）真实世界里啦。）这两句对话只是在视频里有，没有出现在文字记录上。我特意在此补上。

为了方便希望直接阅读采访文字的英文原文报道的读者，我将英文原文报道的内容（文字+照片）拷贝粘贴如下（注：个别毛利单词，我做了英文/中文加注）：

Statistics legend Ross Ihaka reflects on his revolutionary software

By Ximena Smith

Originally published by Māori Television

It's hard to overstate the importance of the number-crunching software that Ross Ihaka (Ngāti Kahungunu, Rangitāne，这是Ross所属的新西兰原住民毛利人的部落的毛利语名称) co-created 30 years ago.

You may have never heard his name before, but it's likely his software regularly touches your life in some way - predicting the weather forecast for next week, for example. Or maybe it's helped scientists analyse the effectiveness of the drugs in your medicine cabinet.

Without getting too technical: the software is a statistical programming language called 'R', and it was developed by Ihaka and a colleague at the University of Auckland in the 1990s.

Today, R is depended upon around the world by analysts, data scientists and big-name companies like Facebook, Google, Amazon and the New York Times, and it's garnered Ihaka something of a rockstar status in the field of data science and statistics.

He's received numerous accolades over the years recognising his work, such as the Royal Society of New Zealand's prestigious Pickering Medal, and the Statistical Computing and Graphics Award from the American Statistical Association.

Asked how many people use R on a daily basis, Ihaka's guess is in the millions but he's not quite sure how many million.

"It's a question that's come up again and again since we started working on it. Because we just give it away and don't track where it goes, we have no idea how many copies get made," Ihaka says.

Part of the reason the R software has spread so far and wide is because it's free - and it always has been.

Ihaka and R's co-founder, Robert Gentleman, believed in the ethos of the free software movement that began in the 1980s, which is that users should be free to share, study and modify software in the way they want to.

"We did briefly think about making commercial software and we thought we might be successful enough to sell 10 copies, [but] who the heck cares about that. So we went the free software route and just let it spread itself basically."

These days, Ihaka has lost track of the many ways people use the software.

"You'll find that there are people who have written [R] programmes to solve Sudoku（数读库填空智力游戏）," Ihaka says.

"There are all sorts of applications that you wouldn't have expected, and that's one measure of success for a programming language: If it gets used for things you didn't in your wildest dreams expect, then it's been a success."

If you look back at Ihaka's early career, it's unsurprising that he built something revolutionary.

While he was completing his PhD at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1980s, he was rubbing shoulders with people who were doing pioneering computer science work, such as building the basic infrastructure of the internet.

One of those people was Bill Joy, who went on to found the computer company Sun Microsystems and was touted as the 'Edison of the Internet' by Fortune Magazine in 1999.

Another was Eric Schmidt, who later became the chief executive of Google.

Ihaka says it was surreal to be in that environment at that point because "it was clear that what was going on was very important work."

The time Ihaka spent at the University of California Berkeley clearly made an impression: He now has the university's motto, 'fiat lux' ('let there be light' in Latin) tattooed on his forearm.

It's just one of the tattoos Ihaka has signifying his 'academic whakapapa'. He says he plans to get a few more in the future too.

But when it comes to Ihaka's Māori whakapapa (genealogy 谱系/族谱), things get a bit more complicated.

Ihaka says he doesn't have a strong sense of cultural connection to his Māori heritage because he's always lived far away from his iwi（部落）; both of his parents were country school teachers, so his family moved around a lot when he was a kid.

"It was so rural, there really weren't many people around. I remember a couple of farming families in the neighbourhood, but that was about it," Ihaka says.

The era he grew up in also contributed to his sense of cultural disconnect.

"​​My father was one of a generation who weren't allowed to speak Māori, and in fact, his grandfather would beat him if he ever caught him speaking Māori（毛利语）. So we lost a certain amount at that point," Ihaka says.

But he says he's always known who he is and where he's from.

"It's a funny position to be in. I would say I'm Māori（毛利人）, I'm Pākehā (white people白人), I'm both（我两者都是）, and I'm neither（我也两者都不是）."

Another interesting position Ihaka has found himself in is being a Māori scientist working in the hard mathematical sciences, particularly when it comes to the relationship between mātauranga Māori (book of knowledge毛利民族的知识体系) and science.

More than a decade ago, he was involved in a project led by Waikato University's Linda Tuhiwai Smith, which brought together mātauranga Māori experts and Māori scientists through a series of wānanga（毛利文化的传统知识）.

"The project really was to try to bring mātauranga Māori and science together and to see where that was practical and where it was difficult," Ihaka says.

"I found value in all knowledge that was presented and considered, and I think importantly that the other people there, the traditional knowledge holders and the scientists, felt the same way."

Ihaka, therefore, believes recent discussions around the 'equal status' of mātauranga are a red herring.

"I don't think you can view knowledge as competitive. Well, within a particular discipline you may have competing theories, but the disciplines themselves shouldn't be regarded as competitive," he says.

"The important thing is that people avail themselves of the knowledge - make use of it."