Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
I feel the discussion about ease of installation on Linux (/*NIX type systems) isn't really relevant to the Pros and Cons of R. The problems encountered by people are often a consequence of their lack of knowledge/understanding of the operating system, and not a deficiency of R itself. Just my tuppence, but I consider myself to be competent in using Linux so this view may be somewhat biased, Neil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Pros-and-Cons-of-R-tp17407521p17510625.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
K. Elo wrote: Hi, Monica Pisica wrote: - There is no perfect “beginner” book. How about - Crawley, Michael (2007). The R book, Wiley Sons. - Maindonald, John John Braun (2007): Data Analysis and Graphics Using R (2nd edition), Cambridge University Press. As a political scientist (with programming experience :) ), both books have helped me to decide in favour of R instead of SPSS when I had to choose the environment for statistical analysis (in Linux). Sadly enough, almost all method books written for social scientists take SPSS as the standard statistical application and, consequently, teach data analysis in a look-for-this-in-SPSS-output-manner. To use R in social sciences, one really must learn how R does things: looking for something in the output is not enough :) BTW, does someone happen to know, if there is any R-book written for social scientists? Kind regards, Kimmo Some of the Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences series of monographs by SAGE publications use R (such as Spatial Regression Models) and there are a few Econometrics books out there (Econometrics in R by Grant Farnsworth is available for free in the contributed section of the CRAN website). __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
On Tue, 27-May-2008 at 06:17AM -0700, DavidM.UK wrote:
|
| I don't think it's an issue with Linux functionality at all, it's a
| case of having your linux machine configured correctly -- which
| isn't a straight forward issue.
Since configuration has a direct bearing on functionality, we're
really saying the same thing. I don't fancy splitting that hair for
this discussion.
|
| On XP I load R and like you point out I'd do:
| install.packages(my package)
| And great my library is installed and ready to use.
|
| Comparatively the number of times I've had that fail on Linux
| systems is high. Of course that depends on what flavour of Linux
Right. The only time I had a problem was when the tgz file was not
unpacked correctly -- no reflection on the quality of the configuration
script. I've managed to get it all working on Fedora, CentOS and on
Mepis and I'm not particularly skilled in setting up Linux.
| you have installed and more... but in fairness it's an indicator
| that R is more difficult to install than some of it's commercial
| competitors to install on Linux. For R, I can't honestly say I know
Software that doesn't have the flexibility that R has certainly can be
easy to set up. Even so, I'll never get Genstat to install on Linux.
[]
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Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
R is definitely an excellent environment for data analysis and display. It has quickly become the tool that I use to bind together different models and process the resulting data into reports and graphics. The Sweave package can be especially useful for accomplishing this. R has also been integrated into some GIS environments, the GRASS system is a good example of this. The book Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach by M.Netler and H. Mitasova. provides an overview of this capability. The following post in the QGIS blog also shows how R can be used to output data as shapefiles which can then be loaded into a GIS application: http://blog.qgis.org/node/112 Monica Pisica wrote: Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. Based on my my experience conducting data analysis and visualization using Fortran and MATLAB, R was refreshingly easy to learn. The demo() and example() functions provide tremendous insight into the use of different tools in R by executing code and showing the results. I also found it extremely easy to obtain consistent graphical output from R. Producing standardized views of different datasets in MATLAB can be an exercise in frustration compared to what I am able to achieve using R. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Pros-and-Cons-of-R-tp17407521p17451695.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
I think one significant problem is the lack of 3D graphics support with interactivity as per MATLAB ( I here Xgobi offers something hear but I couldn't comment having not used it) On the GUI issue, I'm split - once you get used to R then it's great just to use the command line - but as a language for teaching students (especially those outside statistics - E.g. social sciences) a command like can be quite daunting. R-Commander I guess addresses this to some degree - though it's no match for the GUI offered by S-Plus (in my opinion). I don't think a working knowledge of any other language can be considered a negative - any half decent programmer should be able to pick up new languages fairly quickly if they are experienced with one. Previous experience is especially useful if moving from matrix style language to R (E.g. MATLAB / OCTAVE). I think your comments on hard to install on linux is a fair one -- in terms of installing the base system that's fine, but when it comes to install packages, I still get tripped up on compilation problems (I just posted a topic on one such problem). It is certainly harder than say installing a MATLAB tool box. Cheers David Monica Pisica wrote: Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books – quite a few …. Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect “beginner” book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Pros-and-Cons-of-R-tp17407521p17450128.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Installation under Gentoo is straightforward too (emerge dev-lang/R). Updating has never really been a problem. CRAN packages are rebuilt if needed when updating R, and periodically all you need to do is fire up R and use update.packages() to update any packages you've installed. Another pro to consider is the cost, you can obtain R for free, SAS/S-Plus/Stata all have licenses of some sort that require purchasing. Neil -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Pros-and-Cons-of-R-tp17407521p17423145.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Neil Shephard wrote: Another pro to consider is the cost, you can obtain R for free, SAS/S-Plus/Stata all have licenses of some sort that require purchasing. Neil Which has the side effect of *not* restricting how many machines are available for use or where; e.g. I was running big process a couple of different times with different scenarios, so I just fired up a few un-used machines and had them all running in parallel for the afternoon - no installation issues as I was able to run it off the network drive (windows as it happens). If I was licence restricted this would not have been possible. Similarly I can do analyses at home on any machine or even if I'm visiting somewhere else! Regards Sean -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Pros-and-Cons-of-R-tp17407521p17424335.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Monica Pisica wrote: - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. If you want to contrast R with statistical packages like SPSS or Stata (and if your audience has rather a background in those than in general purpose languages), I think this is not really a problem unless I missed something recently about the capabilities of SPSS or Stata. Best, Roland __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Monica, here are some other Pros to consider about R: 1) IMHO, the most important reason for using R is that expressed by John Chambers as the aim of the S language: to turn ideas into software, quickly and faithfully. The broad capabilities of R facilitate the integration of data maintenance and cleaning, exploratory data analysis, model estimation, model implementation, model calibration, model application, and the reporting and display of model outputs. This has tremendous productivity advantages. For example, I was able to meet a tight timeline for developing a regional land use model because R allowed me to easily move through the steps of model development from data analysis to implementation. I even found that I could do some geographical operations that could not be done using our GIS software. In addition, all of the model outputs (including a very many maps) were produced with R. Once you learn how to use R in this way, you will find it takes less time to program the outputs in R than to produce them in GIS. R yields productivity advantages in smaller ways too. We've developed a number of small applications to solve GIS or other problems that could not be solved as easily using other tools. Moreover, once they have been solved using R, the solutions are easily automated or recycled in other contexts. 2) R facilitates documentation and replication. Previous to using R, we did our data analysis and implemented our models in a variety of platforms. For example, Access, Excel, SPSS and Stata were all previously used in household survey data processing and analysis. This was a documentation nightmare. All the steps can be done using R instead and documentation can be easily included in the scripts. If care is taken to use good naming conventions that emphasize readability, the scripts can be largely self documenting. This also facilitates group work. Since we started using R in our work, we have been able to greatly increase our modeling capabilities and output with no increase in staffing. Brian Gregor, P.E. Senior Transportation Analyst Oregon Department of Transportation Transportation Planning Analysis Unit 555 13th Street NE Salem, OR 97301 503-986-4120 Message: 22 Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 16:00:10 + From: Monica Pisica [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [R] Pros and Cons of R To: r-help@r-project.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1252 Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphi cs/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books ? quite a few ?. Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect ?beginner? book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Yes, but R is not a spectator sport and that is the beauty of it. GREGOR Brian J [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/23/2008 01:00 PM To r-help@r-project.org cc Subject Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R Monica, here are some other Pros to consider about R: 1) IMHO, the most important reason for using R is that expressed by John Chambers as the aim of the S language: to turn ideas into software, quickly and faithfully. The broad capabilities of R facilitate the integration of data maintenance and cleaning, exploratory data analysis, model estimation, model implementation, model calibration, model application, and the reporting and display of model outputs. This has tremendous productivity advantages. For example, I was able to meet a tight timeline for developing a regional land use model because R allowed me to easily move through the steps of model development from data analysis to implementation. I even found that I could do some geographical operations that could not be done using our GIS software. In addition, all of the model outputs (including a very many maps) were produced with R. Once you learn how to use R in this way, you will find it takes less time to program the outputs in R than to produce them in GIS. R yields productivity advantages in smaller ways too. We've developed a number of small applications to solve GIS or other problems that could not be solved as easily using other tools. Moreover, once they have been solved using R, the solutions are easily automated or recycled in other contexts. 2) R facilitates documentation and replication. Previous to using R, we did our data analysis and implemented our models in a variety of platforms. For example, Access, Excel, SPSS and Stata were all previously used in household survey data processing and analysis. This was a documentation nightmare. All the steps can be done using R instead and documentation can be easily included in the scripts. If care is taken to use good naming conventions that emphasize readability, the scripts can be largely self documenting. This also facilitates group work. Since we started using R in our work, we have been able to greatly increase our modeling capabilities and output with no increase in staffing. Brian Gregor, P.E. Senior Transportation Analyst Oregon Department of Transportation Transportation Planning Analysis Unit 555 13th Street NE Salem, OR 97301 503-986-4120 Message: 22 Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 16:00:10 + From: Monica Pisica [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [R] Pros and Cons of R To: r-help@r-project.org Message-ID: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Content-Type: text/plain; charset=Windows-1252 Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphi cs/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books ? quite a few ?. Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect ?beginner? book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
I even carry a copy of R on a USB so that I can do a bit of work on a machine that does not have it installed. It's a bit slow and one would not want to do anything major with it but it's handy to show someone a quick graph or check something when far from the office. --- seanpor [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Neil Shephard wrote: Another pro to consider is the cost, you can obtain R for free, SAS/S-Plus/Stata all have licenses of some sort that require purchasing. Neil Which has the side effect of *not* restricting how many machines are available for use or where; e.g. I was running big process a couple of different times with different scenarios, so I just fired up a few un-used machines and had them all running in parallel for the afternoon - no installation issues as I was able to run it off the network drive (windows as it happens). If I was licence restricted this would not have been possible. Similarly I can do analyses at home on any machine or even if I'm visiting somewhere else! Regards Sean __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
GREGOR Brian J wrote: Monica, here are some other Pros to consider about R: snip 2) R facilitates documentation and replication. snip When I finally made the effort to learn how to make R packages, I experienced a substantial increase in my productivity. Before I start coding a new functions, I now write a help page including test cases in the examples. Each function is part of a package. After the code is complete, I check (and build and install) the package. If a change to function A breaks something in functionB, this usually exposes it fairly quickly. On average, I get working code much faster than I did previously. Moreover, when I'm done, I have (almost for free) a package that is reasonably well documented that I can easily share with others. This may not belong in a discussion to a group of people who may not develop new statistical procedures, but I believe it can help almost anyone who develops a procedure that will likely be used more than once or twice. Spencer R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
[R] Pros and Cons of R
Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books – quite a few …. Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect “beginner” book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 5:00 PM, Monica Pisica [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. Actually, it is quite easy to install R under Linux, at least in some distributions. For instance, on Fedora: yum install R R-devel and that is it. Paul __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Monica Pisica wrote: Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. I don't think the learning curve is any steeper than SAS programming, it is just a different kind of curve. -- Kevin E. Thorpe Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 416.864.5776 Fax: 416.864.6057 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
agree, i think R is more like a standard program language than SAS. however, SAS programmer might not feel intuitive to pick up R. On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 12:14 PM, Kevin E. Thorpe [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Monica Pisica wrote: Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. I don't think the learning curve is any steeper than SAS programming, it is just a different kind of curve. -- Kevin E. Thorpe Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 416.864.5776 Fax: 416.864.6057 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. -- === WenSui Liu Call for Donations for the China Earthquake! Blog : statcompute.spaces.live.com __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Wensui Liu wrote: agree, i think R is more like a standard program language than SAS. however, SAS programmer might not feel intuitive to pick up R. That says more about SAS programmers than it does about R. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Hello, I enjoy using R, and find the excellence of this newsgroup removes most of the altitude of the learning curve. Any learning curve, IMHO, is more than offset by the benefits and capabilities of the language and its awesome plotting tools. A grateful advocate, John Kevin E. Thorpe wrote: Monica Pisica wrote: Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. I don't think the learning curve is any steeper than SAS programming, it is just a different kind of curve. -- Kevin E. Thorpe Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 416.864.5776 Fax: 416.864.6057 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
What do you mean, there are no up-grades? There are 1,401 ancillary packages - all free. That sounds like upgrades to me. Of course there is no *perfect* beginner's book, but Peter Dalgaard's Introductory Statistics with R (Paperback), Springer, 3d printing edition (January 9, 2004) is pretty close. If you don't know much statistics, it will teach you statistics while teaching you R. If you already know statistics, it will demonstrate how to do familiar things using R. Charles Annis, P.E. [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 561-352-9699 eFax: 614-455-3265 http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Monica Pisica Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 12:00 PM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: [R] Pros and Cons of R Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/O neMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books - quite a few .. Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect beginner book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
On the 64-bit part, I tested 2.7.0 on a Dual Core Lenovo ThinkPad and was able to allocate memory beyond 2G. Have not done much else otherwise but it seems to work just fine. H -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Monica Pisica Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 9:00 AM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: [R] Pros and Cons of R Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books - quite a few Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect beginner book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
This is about the 8761st time that this old warhorse has been discussed on this list. I suggest you search the archives (e.g. via CRAN, Gmane, Google,...) for these prior discussions. -- Bert Gunter Genentech P.S. Incidentally, the answer to your question is It depends... -- on what your applications/needs are, on what your statistical computing resources are, and most importantly, on what your users are willing to put into using it. Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/O neMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books - quite a few .. Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect beginner book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Charles, I don't consider packages as up-grades, i consider them as enhancements . When a new R version is in place you cannot up-grade your old R version, you have to do a new installation and re-load all the packages you used to have and delete / un-install the old version of course you can customize how you do this but it is not an up-grade per se as you would go for example from softname v.3 to softname v.4 using an up-grad einstead of a full installation version. New versions of R are always full versions . while this does not bother me a bit since now i have a way of installing everything with very little hassle, it may confuse and even frustrate others less dedicated to using R. So - in my opinion - for a novice in R this might be a minus. Monica From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; r-help@r-project.org Subject: RE: [R] Pros and Cons of R Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 12:24:49 -0400 What do you mean, there are no up-grades? There are 1,401 ancillary packages - all free. That sounds like upgrades to me. Of course there is no *perfect* beginner's book, but Peter Dalgaard's Introductory Statistics with R (Paperback), Springer, 3d printing edition (January 9, 2004) is pretty close. If you don't know much statistics, it will teach you statistics while teaching you R. If you already know statistics, it will demonstrate how to do familiar things using R. Charles Annis, P.E. [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 561-352-9699 eFax: 614-455-3265 http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Monica Pisica Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 12:00 PM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: [R] Pros and Cons of R Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/O neMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books - quite a few .. Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect beginner book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. _ Change the world with e-mail. Join the im Initiative from Microsoft. ld [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Hi, Monica Pisica wrote: - There is no perfect “beginner” book. How about - Crawley, Michael (2007). The R book, Wiley Sons. - Maindonald, John John Braun (2007): Data Analysis and Graphics Using R (2nd edition), Cambridge University Press. As a political scientist (with programming experience :) ), both books have helped me to decide in favour of R instead of SPSS when I had to choose the environment for statistical analysis (in Linux). Sadly enough, almost all method books written for social scientists take SPSS as the standard statistical application and, consequently, teach data analysis in a look-for-this-in-SPSS-output-manner. To use R in social sciences, one really must learn how R does things: looking for something in the output is not enough :) BTW, does someone happen to know, if there is any R-book written for social scientists? Kind regards, Kimmo __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books - quite a few I think you should considering adding the quality of support, as represented by this list and the archives (easily accesible with RSiteSearch). Not many softwares have their creators and best minds answering the cries for help from the most humble users (though these creators and best minds can be rough at times, probably with good reasons). Rubén __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
I think it is a fairly safe bet that at any given time there are numerous 64-bit R sessions using more than 4GB of memory -- I periodically have one. In my opinion 64-bit implementation is definitely in the pro column. It is as transparent going from 32-bit to 64-bit as moving between 32-bit platforms. As for installation problems with Linux, some people do have problems but I don't think that is the typical experience. Patrick Burns [EMAIL PROTECTED] +44 (0)20 8525 0696 http://www.burns-stat.com (home of S Poetry and A Guide for the Unwilling S User) Monica Pisica wrote: Thanks for the heads up - i will add that to the pros. Monica From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; r-help@r-project.org Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 09:32:06 -0700 Subject: RE: [R] Pros and Cons of R On the 64-bit part, I tested 2.7.0 on a Dual Core Lenovo ThinkPad and was able to allocate memory beyond 2G. Have not done much else otherwise but it seems to work just fine. H -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Monica Pisica Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 9:00 AM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: [R] Pros and Cons of R Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books - quite a few Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect beginner book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. _ Give to a good cause with every e-mail. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
There is a new book coming out this year on spatial data analysis in R. http://www.springer.com/statistics/statistical+theory+and+methods/book/978-0-387-78170-9 I am not sure there are any other book length treatments of spatial data analysis that utilize any of the other major statistical packages [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, IMHO, - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI, this should be considered a Pro. The commandline is much more powerful than a GUI. Cheers, John Monica Pisica wrote: Charles, I don't consider packages as up-grades, i consider them as enhancements . When a new R version is in place you cannot up-grade your old R version, you have to do a new installation and re-load all the packages you used to have and delete / un-install the old version of course you can customize how you do this but it is not an up-grade per se as you would go for example from softname v.3 to softname v.4 using an up-grad einstead of a full installation version. New versions of R are always full versions . while this does not bother me a bit since now i have a way of installing everything with very little hassle, it may confuse and even frustrate others less dedicated to using R. So - in my opinion - for a novice in R this might be a minus. Monica From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; r-help@r-project.org Subject: RE: [R] Pros and Cons of R Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 12:24:49 -0400 What do you mean, there are no up-grades? There are 1,401 ancillary packages - all free. That sounds like upgrades to me. Of course there is no *perfect* beginner's book, but Peter Dalgaard's Introductory Statistics with R (Paperback), Springer, 3d printing edition (January 9, 2004) is pretty close. If you don't know much statistics, it will teach you statistics while teaching you R. If you already know statistics, it will demonstrate how to do familiar things using R. Charles Annis, P.E. [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 561-352-9699 eFax: 614-455-3265 http://www.StatisticalEngineering.com -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Monica Pisica Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 12:00 ! PM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: [R] Pros and Cons of R Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/O neMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user g! roup list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily! increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books - quite a few .. Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect beginner book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.! ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. _ Change the world with e-mail. Join the i’m Initiative from Microsoft. ld [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read
[R] Pros and Cons of R
On Thu, 22 May 2008, Monica Pisica wrote: I don't consider packages as up-grades, i consider them as enhancements . When a new R version is in place you cannot up-grade your old R version, you have to do a new installation and re-load all the packages you used to have and delete / un-install the old version ummm -- this is of course a function of the package manager and operating system being used, and not of R intrinsicly; under an RPM package manager, this issue is not present (the CentOS community linux distribution) -- Russ herrold __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 12:00 PM, Monica Pisica [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.html together with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books – quite a few …. Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect beginner book. I don't think that there can be the perfect book since different people have different backgrounds and different interests and that implies a different book for different people; however, there are many books and there is a large amount of material available: http://cran.r-project.org/other-docs.html http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-publications.html http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html and vignettes in individual packages. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. What's the difference bewteen an update and an up-grade? If you mean addon packages there are 1500+ in CRAN and BioC. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. There do exist GUI front ends although the full power of R requires the command line: http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/ Also its possible to write your own GUI front ends to your own programs. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Hi, I have no idea about SAS but i know that when i've started using R i've struggled quite a bit until i started to get some insight and results. I cannot say it is easier now, but certainly i like it much better, i would not be ale to do the work i am doing without it and i would hate to change to a different statistical software. About the steep learning curve well i agree that depends on who is learning it . but i think i am understanding that totally opposite than Ben . If x is the amount of learning and results (e.g. progress) and y is the time . i certainly think you can spend a lot of time trying to learn and understand things in R without much progress . I would consider that steep learning curve but i might be wrong ;-) Also, R does have a GUI and i say it is minimal but if i use anything else - at least in my experience - since i tend to do computations which are very demanding on memory (at least under dreaded Windows) - I decided against them. So i suppose it is a personal choice, although more advanced GUI are available with R. The fact that the R list is very helpful it is already in the pros and probably i learn from it much more than from anything else Actually the list help me not to give up on R when i've started, and i stick with it inspite of ill put questions (and i put quite a few in my time - and it seems i still do) and answers from kind and protective and helpful to rather ill humored - but even thouse usually had some info of interest. I don't think i ever put a question which was not ultimately answered here And ... it is obvious i was wrong about R and Linux ... although i saw so many messages about installation problems under Linux that i assumed it is harder to install . i guess it is not the case. Also, it seems i have mistaken up-grades with updates regarding R versions . I consider packages as enhancements - but maybe they are up-grades i would be lost without them ;-) Thanks so much for your replies, Monica Date: Thu, 22 May 2008 12:14:11 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: r-help@r-project.org Subject: Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R Monica Pisica wrote:Cons:- R has a very steep learning curve. I don't think the learning curve is any steeper than SAS programming, it is just a different kind of curve. -- Kevin E. Thorpe Biostatistician/Trialist, Knowledge Translation Program Assistant Professor, Department of Public Health Sciences Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel: 416.864.5776 Fax: 416.864.6057 _ Make every e-mail and IM count. Join the im Initiative from Microsoft. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 02:07:01PM -0400, R P Herrold wrote: On Thu, 22 May 2008, Monica Pisica wrote: [...] When a new R version is in place you cannot up-grade your old R version, you have to do a new installation and re-load all the packages you used to have and delete / un-install the old version ummm -- this is of course a function of the package manager and operating system being used, and not of R intrinsicly; under an RPM package manager, this issue is not present Neither under .deb based OS:es such as Ubuntu and Debian. -- Hans Ekbrand (http://sociologi.cjb.net) [EMAIL PROTECTED] Q. What is that strange attachment in this mail? A. My digital signature, see www.gnupg.org for info on how you could use it to ensure that this mail is from me and has not been altered on the way to you. signature.asc Description: Digital signature __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R :GUI
R has very good GUI packages that I have used - R Commander RCmdr and Rattle rattle . Since I work on multiple packages with constraints of time, I almost always use the GUI rather go through the intricacies of command line . The log of these GUIs shows the relevant R command that was used, so you can actually learn the language also. I have written about the ease of learning R , if you begin with these two packages first and are working in a commercial data environment on http://decisionstats.com/2008/learning-r-easily-two-guis/ On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 9:30 PM, Monica Pisica [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.htmltogether with examples of my own work. I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are: Pros: - R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis. - R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux). - Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place. - Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has an active user group list / forum. - External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles. - R related books quite a few . Cons: - R has a very steep learning curve. - There is no perfect beginner book. - Experience with other programming languages is a plus / minus. - You can save scripts, but not *.exe. - It is updated several times a year (good) but there are no up-grades. - It seems that it is hard to install correctly under Linux. - Everything you want to do is a command line, minimal GUI. - Memory management problems (depends on your OS), especially when displaying big images at high resolution or working with huge matrices (hundreds of Mb). Also i am wondering if R works under 64 bit computers and if it takes advantage of it. Thanks, Monica _ Refresh_family_safety_052008 __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] __ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Completely agreed!
BR, Shubha
Shubha Karanth | Amba Research
Ph +91 80 3980 8031 | Mob +91 94 4886 4510
Bangalore * Colombo * London * New York * San José * Singapore *
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-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ruben Roa Ureta
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 10:53 PM
To: Monica Pisica
Cc: r-help@r-project.org
Subject: Re: [R] Pros and Cons of R
Hi,
I am doing a very informal presentation for my office about R capabilities
to deal with and analyze spatial data, display data and maps, and
connections with GIS. I've used in my presentation info from the CRAN, the
spatial Task view, and the more striking graphics examples from
http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/thumbs.php and NCEAS
http://www.nceas.ucsb.edu/scicomp/GISSeminar/UseCases/MapProdWithRGraphics/OneMapProdWithRGraphics.html
together with examples of my own work.
I am finishing with pros and cons about R and I am wondering if you can
come up with other examples, or comments. Here they are:
Pros:
- R is a programming environment well suited for statistical analysis.
- R is open source and cross platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux).
- Fortran, C (C++), and Python wrappers are in place.
- Deals well with spatial data, has a robust graphical interface and has
an active user group list / forum.
- External packages for R are almost daily increasing, most of them based
on published up-to-date books and peer-reviewed articles.
- R related books - quite a few
I think you should considering adding the quality of support, as
represented by this list and the archives (easily accesible with
RSiteSearch). Not many softwares have their creators and best minds
answering the cries for help from the most humble users (though these
creators and best minds can be rough at times, probably with good
reasons).
Rubén
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