R is becoming the programming language of choice for ecologists- the language is free and so are many useful programs for analysis. Rather than buying a year license for many different programs, R offers flexibility.
Coursera is offering a free on-line course in the programming language R with Roger Peng at Johns Hopkins University. The course starts this September 23. Here's a link to the course information: https://www.coursera.org/course/compdata These books were also recommended to me: Statistics for Ecologists using R and Excel by Mark Gardener (ISBN: 978-1-907807-12-1) and Getting Started with R: An Introduction for Biologists by Beckerman and Petchey (ISBN: 978-0-19-960162-2)
