[8ren]

Is it really true that business people use R directly? Being in Forbes is consistent with it...

I recall that SQL was intended to be used by business people... and it probably has been, sometimes; but I don't think it happens much. The days of early adoption might have differed, through appealing to the more adventurous business people (as R might be now).

One thing I know for a fact: business people use spreadsheets. I think making something that easy to get things done in is an incredible achievement. As an example, I think PHP has approached but not attained it.

[stcredzero]

How about a spreadsheet that uses R as its scripting language? (There's one of these for Python.)

[util]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RExcel

[8ren]

I don't know if business people do a lot of scripting (if any) in spreadsheets, because it side-steps the ease-of-use GUI of spreadsheet in favour of a programmer's UI...

[something]

look inside your average quantitative analysis or risk management group and you'll see that they definitely do.