"Real statisticians use GNU R"
This person has been a "real statistician" for many many decades. Graduated
Harvard graduate school with PHD in Statistics, taught at a major university
as a full professor with tenure for decades, discovered an entire area of
Statistics, is a Fellow of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, has countless
publications in all of the main journals as well as some non-statistics
journals, has done consulting in the public and private sectors of great
social and national importance, and was the thesis advisor for dozens of
those "real statisticians".
He even taught a basic course one semester in GNU R! However, knowing the
basics in R and knowing enough to do very advanced work are two very
different things. Just as teaching an introductory course in C does not make
you an advanced programmer in C
But you are correct about GNU R as a substitute for SAS. In fact, it is not
only a substitute, but the above statistician told me that it is superior to
SAS. But SAS does the job he needs to do and he does not have months to
spend becoming an expert at R.
