About 13, 000 students from around the world will start taking an online statistics course at Wesleyan University in Connecticut next week using SAS On-Demand and the R language.

FORBES: Wesleyan Takes A Passion For Statistics To The MOOC World With SAS

Users can interact with the data through Excel or a language like R, but all the data and the calculations are consistent, he said.

FORBES: Managing Risk Beyond The Limits Of Excel

The hype has been helped in no small part by controversy around the R-rated film's excessive violence and language, much of which is doled out by actress Chloe Grace Moretz, who was 11 when she played the role of Hit Girl.

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