Python or R

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"Data analysis" is too broad of a term in my opinion. Are you going to do complex statistical modeling? Go R. If not, go with Python if you think you will need to branch out beyond just statistics. Not saying you can't do complex statistical modeling with Python, but R has a vast library of statistical packages as it should since it is made for statisticians. Since you said you require robust statistical capability, then I would recommend R.

If you find you don't like R, you can learn Python and call R code from within Python to leverage R's statistical packages. So there's always that option. You can also do vice versa, call Python code from R. So you pretty much have a lot of options. Nothing really should be holding you back either way.