Does anybody here use R language?

[ChrisLeslie]

I am required to learn and use a language called "R" for statistics and graphing. It is based on S-plus. Does anyone have any experience using it, what do you think of it, and how does it compare with Matlab?

Regards

Chris

 

[Crosson]

I have used it, it is similar to MATLAB in many ways, with the many difference being the emphasis on statistics analysis as opposed to matrices.

R includes its own programming language, and I think it does a better job at graphics then MATLAB, plus its free. The user interface is not as good as MATLAB, but its fine.

 

[imabug]

If you're doing a lot of statistics and data analysis work, R would be a good thing to have under your belt. There's a rich library of statistical and graphing functions and a bunch of cool third party stuff out there as well. There's a bit of a learning curve to climb, but it's not too bad.

R also has the added benefit of being free with binary distributions available for most platforms, including Windows.

The R Newsletters are worth checking out and will give you an idea of the kinds of things people are doing with R and what it's capable of.

Main R page
http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php
http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/

 

[jackdagg]

R is certainly a useful skill to have if in the scientific field. The learning curve is steeper than traditional statistics packages such as SAS and SPSS. But it can be worth the investment. And the new techniques are commonly implemented first in R.

Jack Dagg