Statistics are the useful numbers that get called upon in any number of situations. Sadly they're often misused and abused mainly by politicians, spin-doctors and the media who have an agenda. Statisticians per se are a fairly honest bunch (at least those I've met, and I'm including myself in that!).
I mainly use two statistical software packages, Stata and the Open Source R, sometimes one at a time, but will often cross-validate work done in one package by repeating it in the other. Detailed below are tips and tricks on getting things done in these software packages.
insheet : reading data into Stataread. : reading data into R