Hi,Just read an article on the R package and was wondering how often it was used on the desks, and whether it was worth learning it...Tks

I've never seen it on a trading desk, but it may be used in the back office for empircal research.You will not waste your time learning R if you need to learn a statistical package anyways, since S-Plus is pretty much the same, and knowing these functions will get you on your way to SPSS if that's what you'll be using.Matlab is used a little bit more in my observation, so learning Octave may be a better open source package to practice if you are not core statistics. Personally, I do everything in Mathematica, and am waiting for someone to tell me if I am doing something the hard way...Of course, mastering C++ and Excel is where you can never go wrong in the world of finance software...

It might not be used on desks but very popular among the hedge fund community...HTH