Simon Pickett wrote:
My institute uses SAS religiously, I am the only R "heathen".
I have resisted learning to use SAS because I dont see the point after
years of using R and I like being able to do everything using one
program. However, my colleagues maintain that SAS is "better" for
programming without really ever giving me a good reason why other than
memory issues.
dont want to hi-jack the thread but would be interested in hearing some
other views, especially since my organisation spends (wastes?) alot of
money every year on SAS licences...
Put quite simply, your colleagues' opinions are humbug.
Frank
Simon.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Laura Arsanto" <ghin...@hotmail.it>
To: <jrkrid...@yahoo.ca>; <r-h...@stat.math.ethz.ch>; <fjb...@gmail.com>
Cc: <ross.laza...@gmail.com>; <gregory_war...@urmc.rochester.edu>;
<g...@warnes.net>
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: [R] Do you use R for data manipulation?
I used R for my master thesis (with big effort, anyway) and now I find
difficult to use R in my daily work, becasue it has really serious
problems with datasets of big dimension, both in the data manipulation
step and in the analysis step.
But I really would love to use it, as I like its transparence, compared
to other software.
Laura
***********
Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 06:42:45 -0700
From: jrkrid...@yahoo.ca
To: r-h...@stat.math.ethz.ch; fjb...@gmail.com
CC: ross.laza...@gmail.com; gregory_war...@urmc.rochester.edu;
g...@warnes.net
Subject: Re: [R] Do you use R for data manipulation?
--- On Wed, 5/6/09, Farrel Buchinsky <fjb...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Is R an appropriate tool for data
> manipulation and data reshaping and data
> organizing? I think so but someone who recently joined our
> group thinks not.
I only do small scale projects and am by no means a programmer. Isn't
Perl something for earings?
That said, I find R to be extremely useful at data manipulation and
have used it exclusively in my last three projects. The different
data structures alone are worth their weight in gold, if for nothing
else than making it harder to make stupid mistakes in coding.
> The new recruit believes that python or another language is
> a far better tool for developing data manipulation scripts that can be
> then used by> several members of our research group. Her assessment is
> that R is useful> only when it comes to data analysis and working with
> statistical models.
Any reason that she thinks this? How well does she know R? It is not
exactly a language that one picks up in a week, especially if one is
coming from using a stats package like SAS or SPSS. As an ex-SAS and
SYSTAT user it took me weeks to just get comfortable with the power of
subscripting and the ability to do all kinds of calculations "in-line".
> So what do you think:
> 1)R is a phenomenally powerful and flexible tool and since you are
going > > to do analyses in R you might as well use it to read data
in and merge
> it and reshape it to whatever you need.
Definately. I am not a computer scientist or a statistician. I usually
am working as a single contractor and normally with small datasets as
part of a larger project. R does what I want, usually very elegantly
(albeit perhaps after a lot of headbanging and calls for help to the
R-list) and it would be stupid for me to use more than one language
when it is not needed.
Another plus is that I can easily leave my data analysis work and a
working copy of R with the client. He/she may have a problem seeing
what I did but it is clearly readable & replicable by either the
client or another consultant.
> OR
> 2) Are you crazy? Nobody in their right mind uses R to pipe
> the data around their lab and assemble it for analysis.
Well I don't work in a lab but why complicate things? If everyone is
using the same tools then you have a good situation. Others who do
work in labs can address this point more cogently
>From a personnel point of view do you expect everyone in the lab to
be >proficient with R and, for example, Perl? What happens when/if you
lose >your Perl expert(s)? I've had occasions where I waited a week
for data >simply because the division's MS Access "expert" was on
holiday and the >only other "Access" person there only knew how to
enter data and run the >monthly reports. Anything more complicated
required the "expert".
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Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University
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