Kevin, This is a nice start. I'll Cc this back to the recently formed 'R in Finance' list we formed as a result of the two Finance sessions at use useR.
One small correction would be that the number of CRAN packages is now in excess of 350 (not 150). And a point you may want to add is that the S language has been used in some geek corners of Finance for decades; the proximity of Bell Labs to Wall St may have something to do with that, as does of course the power and elegance of the language. S-Plus also offers some fancypants add-on modules, and we'll try hard over the next few months and years to catch up. A major help in that regard is Diethelm Wuertz' most excellent Rmetrics collection at http://www.rmetrics.org This is currently windows-only, but Diethelm and I are committed to getting it into Debian (and my Quantian) so that general Unix/Linux use should fall out as a side benefit. Hope this helps, Dirk On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:50:32PM +1200, Ko-Kang Kevin Wang wrote: > Hi, > > I've been doing a joint research with someone from the Property > Department here and she is about to give a presentation on the > results. The audience will include people from Property and Finance, > and she is wondering how to describe R to these people (as I used R to > do the analyses), since she has never even heard of R before our joint > research (and has been using SPSS). The difficult part is she has > only about 1 ~ 2 minutes to talk about R. > > The following is what I have in mind, any suggestions from people in > Finance will be greatly appreciated! (From our research together I > think it may be safe to assume the audience will know, or at least > have heard of, basic statistical terminology such as multiple linear > regression and dummy variables). > > \begin{quote} > R was originally developed by Dr. Ross Ihaka and Dr. Robert Gentleman > from the Department of Statistics at the University of Auckland in > 1992. It is free and in the last decade it has evolved into one of > the most powerful statistical software, with over 150 user-contributed > add-on packages. It is not only used by statisticians or scientists, > but also econometricians and people in finance due to its cost (FREE) > and its powerfulness. > > Although it has a slightly higher learning curve than SPSS-like > program, it gets easier to use once one is familiar with it. One of > the main advantage it has over SPSS-like software is that you do not > need to explicitly create dummy variables. You only need to specify > your dependent variable and independent variables and R will fit it > (and create dummy variables automatically) for you. > > It also has many state-of-art free resources, including manuals, > contributed tutorials and documentations, online. A free mailing list > is also available for people to ask questions and questions are > usually answered by more experienced users around the world within a > few hours (sometimes even within minutes). > \end{quote} > > As mentioned above, she was rather impressed when I mention that one > does not need to create dummy variables in R. Therefore I am thinking > she might be interested in mentioning it in her talk. > > I have never had experience of trying to introduce R to > non-Scientists, hence I would appreciate any comments! > > Cheers, > > Kevin > > -------------------------------------------- > Ko-Kang Kevin Wang, MSc(Hon) > SLC Stats Workshops Co-ordinator > The University of Auckland > New Zealand > > ______________________________________________ > [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list > https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > -- FEATURE: VW Beetle license plate in California ______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html