On 9/20/05, Patrick Burns <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Gabor Grothendieck wrote: > ... > > >The fact that Excel has both an interactive interface and a script-based > >interface whereas R has only a script-based interface puts it ahead, not > >behind, R in at least some respects. > > > > > > Sorry, but I can't resist: That very much depends on if > you are doing something that is appropriate to be done > in a spreadsheet. The set of tasks appropriate for R is > very much larger than the set appropriate for Excel. > > http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html >
I certainly don't want to be an apologist for Excel but I would not asses its domain of applicability to be a subset of that of R. I agree with most of the points made in the link you cited but its mainly concerned with stretching the use of spreadsheets to situations where R would be better At the same time the domain where spreadsheets are appropriate and preferable is very large and probably exceeds the domain where R is preferable to Excel due to the fact that financial, accounting and budgetary work done by every organization is mostly in the domain of applicabilty of Excel. Also I think the link overstates the case, at least in reference to Excel, since some of the criticisms can be overcome using Excel's scripting capability. ______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
