Hi I don't know if you are asking the question for the same reasons I did, but recently (and ongoing) we have been required to adopt an internationally recognised standard. Being in the bioinformatics field, where open-source software is the beating heart of cutting edge research, we have obviously had to ask ourselves that exact question - "How can we be sure the software we use works?".
In science, this doesn't just apply to software though. When someone publishes a paper, how can any of us be sure they did what they said they did? Or that their methods are the correct ones to use? Luckily, there is a two word answer that we hope will satisfy our auditors, and that is "Peer Review". In the context of R, I would say that you could put a confidence measure on any package based on the number of people who use it; the more people who use a package, the more likely they are to find and remove bugs. I won't get into the "open source" vs "commercial" argument, but put simply, all software has bugs at some stage, no matter who has written it. Given that fact, I prefer the code to be open so I can see them, not closed so that I can't. The fact that we can see all code relating to R is surely the biggest quality measure of all? Cheers Mick -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 27 January 2005 05:10 To: [email protected] Subject: [R] A "rude" question Dear all, I am beginner using R. I have a question about it. When you use it, since it is written by so many authors, how do you know that the results are trustable?(I don't want to affend anyone, also I trust people). But I think this should be a question. Thanks, Ming ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
