-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Beginner's choice: R or MatLab ?
Date: Wed, 1 Apr 2009 14:26:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: G. Alex Janevski <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
References: <[email protected]>
I second most of what Matt said. I would also argue that R has a fairly
steep learning curve for a programming or statistics novice. I don't
know how that compares to what would be faced using MatLab. However,
once you get past the learning curve, the benefits of R are
extraordinary. As others have commented, R is free and multi-platform.
This means anyone can use it at any time, including poor students and
researchers. Also, it's a fairly small piece of software, given what it
does. It doesn't require add-ons, though packages are available to do
almost everything imaginable. In fact, if I have one major complaint,
it's that I've often done things by hand before realizing someone else
had already created a package with a function that did it better and
faster than I could (thoroughly searching the archives is a must). R is
structured to encourage users to contribute their work in the form of
packages. This is really useful for a research community. If someone on
this list develops a great morphometrics package and puts it on the R
site, it's readily available for everyone else to use, and, arguably
more importantly, to modify. Also, the graphics capabilities are
outstanding. I don't know whether that also applies to MatLab, but it's
a nice part of R.
morphmet wrote:
-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Beginner's choice: R or MatLab ?
Date: Tue, 31 Mar 2009 11:50:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: Matthew Burton-Kelly <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
References: <[email protected]>
Considering I've never used Matlab, I have little to contribute to
that particular question. Using R, however, has highlighted some
particular weaknesses in my understanding of mathematics and
statistics, so I think it has helped me get ahold of theory a little
better because you have to think everything out first.
I like R because it is open-source and because it has a programming-
like interface, but having never taken a modern programming course,
some of the data types completely baffle me, so I end up doing things
the long way round.
Matt
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G. Alex Janevski
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