My reaction when learning of a proposed patent on a new graph was: "oh
well, that's something I can forget about". Without a patent, code would
have been available in R in a very short period of time, the statistical
community would have been able to play around with it, see how it worked
on various problems. If the graph proved useful it would make its way into
statistical practice. With a patent none of that seems possible. Prof
Munoz has had fun exploring his creation, but if any of us are to do
likewise I guess we will either pay up or secretly write code and play
around with diamond graphs while hidden in the basement.
Getting a graph used is not that simple I think. Boxplots are now an
extremely useful tool, but lets not forget that Tukey also invented the
hanging rootogram.
As for Microsoft getting involved, God help us. Excel still doesn't do
boxplots does it? Not to mention the quality of their implementation of
most of their statistical routines.
Like others I welcome the contribution of those at Johns Hopkins to the
debate. And they perhaps shouldn't worry about us here at R-help, who are
maybe just a fringe element of open source loving anti-M$ weirdos. Then
again we may be the last bastion of open scientific enquiry.
David Scott
_________________________________________________________________
David Scott Department of Statistics, Tamaki Campus
The University of Auckland, PB 92019
Auckland NEW ZEALAND
Phone: +64 9 373 7599 ext 86830 Fax: +64 9 373 7000
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Graduate Officer, Department of Statistics
Webmaster, New Zealand Statistical Association:
http://www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/nzsa/
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