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". > > > > > > __________________________________________________________________ > Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet Explorer® > 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at > http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/ > > ______________________________________________ > 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. _________________________________________________________________ [[elided Hotmail spam]] [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________ 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.
