I am looking for the best available estimate of the current number of R Users in the United States. I have found quite a number of estimates of growth trends or of relative number of users based on github software, publications, stackoverflow questions, search engine searches and the like, but these series only support judgements on the relative number of users, not on the absolute number.
I understand that the NY Times estimated at least a million R users in 2009 and Revolution Analytics reported in 2012 that Oracle had estimated in 2012 that there were at least two million R users. But I don't know anything about the methodology used to generate either of these estimates. Also, these are global totals, and for my purposes I need US totals.
Depending on whether I use the 2009 one million or the 2012 two million estimate, and which indicator series I use to update those estimates, I get a 2018 estimate of 7.5 (2 mill., 2012, 25% annual growth) to 18.1 million (1. mill., 2019, 37%) R users. But even the lower estimate is a pretty bold claim, and I would not want to rely on it without some better corroboration than I now have..