Samuel Mwendwa , my advise is to learn R directly. There are many advantages over other software. The only competitor would be Stata. The only problem of R is that the learning curve is very steep. In order to learn, I would recommend some online course tailored to your field and then just to work and work with it in a project. I would recommend using it combined with LaTeX.

In a direct answer to your question, No. It is not necessary to learn R before other statistical analyses software. However, a little background on how statistical analyses are conducted will be required before delving into R. Also, be prepared to write a lot of codes in R, which is different from what is obtainable in other GUI statistical software you know. Mind you, R is limitless! Happy learning!!

R came as a solution to problems with our conventional statistical procedures. To understand R, you first need to understand the conventional statistical procedures.

First, it is necessary to learn traditional statistics and understand its reasoning, then learn R.

This link is very related:

https://statanalytica.com/blog/r-vs-stata/

As someone who started with Stata and SPSS simultenously and switched to R later, I would suggest learning R first. R is much more accomplishing to me. Whether you have a coding experience or not, R is easy to learn. In R, there ise library swirl() that helps you learn basics of R and how to run some statistical analysis. I would recommend using it in the beginning!

Hi Samuel,

I would opt to learn R. For starters, it is 100% free. There is a very large online support community in case you have questions too. What you can do with R is pretty incredible. You can make your own website, write a book in it, check your stocks, or create a graphical analytical plugin you can share with colleagues. It works as a purely statistical tool or you can use it as you might use ArcGIS. There are so many things you can do with R that you can't do with Stata, SPSS, python, etc. The downside to R is that it eats up your RAM which means large programs might run slowly. There are several ways to get around this problem though. Definitely learn R if you intend to do statistical analyses where reproducibility and shareability are important.

Cheers,

Eron

Please Go To This Link :

https://qz.com/1063071/the-great-r-versus-python-for-data-science-debate/

Dear Abdelkader, the R package is self sufficient and previous learning is only an advantage but not a necessity. In fact, depending on who is concerned, too much learning may weary the mind.

I recommend that you commence R straightaway. Enjoy it.