To me R is just another programming language. In fact it seems to share quite a lot of the characteristics of "fashionable" languages such as python - for example dynamic typing amonst others. The fact it happens to be good for statistics and other mathematical stuff is a bonus.
David -------------------------- David Jessop Global Head of Quantitative Research UBS Investment Research +44 20 7567 9882 ----- Original Message ----- From: r-help-boun...@r-project.org <r-help-boun...@r-project.org> To: Patrick Burns <pbu...@pburns.seanet.com> Cc: r-help@r-project.org <r-help@r-project.org> Sent: Tue Jun 22 14:38:38 2010 Subject: Re: [R] Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata... Hehe, You do have a point in not calling R a statistical language. It is indeed far more than that; Yet, I don't agree that statistics is done by stuffy professors. Wished it was so, but alas, last time I looked at my paycheck I had to conclude that I might be stuffy, but I'm far from being paid as a professor... Cheers Joris On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Patrick Burns <pbu...@pburns.seanet.com> wrote: > I'll expand my statement slightly. > > Yes, Peter, you are the archetypical > stuffy professor. The truth hurts. > > By any reasonable metric that I've > thought of my company name is at least > one-third "statistics", from which a > common (and I think correct) inference > would be that I'm not anti-statistics. > > > There are two aspects of why I think > that R should not be called a statistical > program: marketing and reality. > > Marketing > > Identifying with the most dreaded experience > in university is not so good for "sales". > (Reducing stuffiness might reduce the root > problem here.) > > Reality > > R really is used for more than statistics. > Almost all of my use of R is outside the > realm of statistics. Maybe the field of > statistics should have claim on a lot of > that, but as of now that isn't the case. > > A Fusion > > R's real competition is not SAS or SPSS, but > Excel. As Brian has pointed out before, > the vast majority of statistics is actually > done in Excel. Is Excel a statistics program? > I don't think many people think that -- neither > statisticians nor non-statisticians. > > Pat > > > On 21/06/2010 10:32, Joris Meys wrote: >> >> On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Patrick Burns >> <pbu...@pburns.seanet.com> wrote: >>> >>> (Statistics is what stuffy professors >>> do, I just look at my data and try to >>> figure out what it means.) >> >> Often those stuffy professors have a reason to do so. When they want >> an objective view on the data for example, or an objective measure of >> the significance of a hypothesis. But you're right, who cares about >> objectiveness these days? It doesn't sell you a paper, does it? >> >> Cheers >> Joris >> >> > > -- > Patrick Burns > pbu...@pburns.seanet.com > http://www.burns-stat.com > (home of 'Some hints for the R beginner' > and 'The R Inferno') > -- Joris Meys Statistical consultant Ghent University Faculty of Bioscience Engineering Department of Applied mathematics, biometrics and process control tel : +32 9 264 59 87 joris.m...@ugent.be ------------------------------- Disclaimer : http://helpdesk.ugent.be/e-maildisclaimer.php ______________________________________________ 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.
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______________________________________________ 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.
