Walter Paczkowski wrote: > Good morning, > > I use SAS and R/S-Plus as my primary tools so I have a lot of experience with > these programs. By far and away, SAS is superior for handling the "messy" > datasets, but also the very large ones. I work at times with datasets in the > hundreds of thousands (and on occasion, millions) of records. SAS, and > especially PROC SQL, are invaluable for this. But once I get to datasets > manageable for R/S-Plus, then I ship to these tools for the programming and > graphics. This seems to work great. > > Walt Paczkowski > Data Analytics Corp.
Previously I used SAS for 23 years and now R/S-Plus for 17. SAS is effective for large datasets (in my work > 500,000 subjects) but except for that, R is far superior to SAS for data management and manipulation. Just four of the reasons are that you can - merge data frames multiple ways and compare the results - deal with arrays (lists) of datasets using high-level operators - easily do complex calculations on serial data such as find the highest blood pressure per subject that is measured before something else is measured - sense the type of a variable (character, factor, date, discrete numeric, continuous numeric, etc.) while analyzing it, and tailor the analysis to the type of variable http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/twiki/pub/Main/RS/sintro.pdf has a large section on data manipulation in S. Frank > > > -----Original Message----- >> From: Rob Robinson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >> Sent: Jan 17, 2008 4:31 AM >> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Subject: Re: [R] things that are difficult/impossible to do in SAS or >> SPSSbut simple in R >> >> >> I wonder if those who complain about SAS as a programming environment have >> discovered SAS/IML which provides a programming environment akin to Matlab >> which is more than capable (at least for those problems which can be treated >> with a matrix like approach). As someone who uses both SAS and R - graphical >> output is so much easier in R, but for handling large 'messy' datasets SAS >> wins hands down... >> Cheers >> Rob >> >> *** Want to know about Britain's birds? Try www.bto.org/birdfacts *** >> >> Dr Rob Robinson, Senior Population Biologist >> British Trust for Ornithology, The Nunnery, Thetford, Norfolk, IP24 2PU >> Ph: +44 (0)1842 750050 E: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >> Fx: +44 (0)1842 750030 W: http://www.bto.org >> >> ==== "How can anyone be enlightened, when truth is so poorly lit" ===== >> >> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jeffrey J. Hallman >>> Sent: 16 January 2008 22:38 >>> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >>> Subject: Re: [R] things that are difficult/impossible to do >>> in SAS or SPSSbut simple in R >>> >>> SAS has no facilities for date arithmetic and no easy way to >>> build it yourself. In fact, that's the biggest problem with >>> SAS: it stinks as a programming environment, so it's always >>> much more difficult than it should be to do something new. >>> As soon as you get away from the canned procs and have to >>> write something of your own, SAS falls down. >>> >>> I don't know enough about SPSS to comment. >>> -- >>> Jeff ______________________________________________ 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.
