If you're looking for a language for statistics, physics, vector arithmetic, and other mathematical/scientific uses you would probably go with R or FORTRAN. FORTRAN was the first programming language ever created (which was used by scientists), so there are hundreds of pre-written code libraries for various mathematical a scientific subjects. R is newer and less quirky than FORTRAN but is mainly used in statistical computing.
For application development, fast software, 3D/2D graphics and simulations, and sometimes general programming, you should go with C++ or C. C++ is object-oriented and heavily revised over C, so you will definitely find it nicer to program in, but C is able to run on almost any platform and is extremely fast over almost any language to date.
For general programming such as websites, small tools, and simple math, Ruby or Python will do just fine.
Hope this helped.
