Google Groups no longer supports new Usenet posts or subscriptions. Historical content remains viewable.
Dismiss

what is "R"? Is it difficult to learn "R"?

49 views
Skip to first unread message

zencaroline

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 1:50:06 AM9/7/07
to

Hello,

At your possible convenience, might any expert please kindly answer
my equestions? Thank you very much.
I am suggested to use "R".

1) What is "R"?

2) Is it difficult to learn "R"?

Thank you very much.

Please take care

Caroline

ckx...@yahoo.com

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 2:40:00 AM9/7/07
to
Not really a SAS question. If you type "R" (capital r) in Google,
you'll get their website http://www.r-project.org/. The faq explains
what R is. Basically, it's a statistical programming language. It's
more flexible but more complex and harder to learn and to use than
statistical packages like SAS, SPSS, Stata. On the other hand, there
are a lot of cutting edge techniques available on R that aren't
available anywhere else. It's a good option if you want to experiment
with new techniques, develop your own, or if you're on a low budget.

See http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/technicalreports/ for a second
opinion.

Good luck,
John Hendrickx

barn...@gmail.com

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 4:04:04 AM9/7/07
to

R is a free version of S-Plus. If you program in R then you use the
program in S-Plus it works ... usually.
Imho S-Plus is a great statistical package and one of its strength is
the graphical part. The difference is that s-Plus is more near to SPSS
as interface, R to SAS. You can found a lot of specifical techinchs
developed by someone and put at disposition on internet.
Learning R is not too difficult, but it's better to use directely on a
project and learning on the field
The strength of R is being free. I don't know, but I would, if is
comparable to SAS for managing big data set

Wit Jakuczun

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 4:07:18 AM9/7/07
to
Dnia Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:50:06 -0000
zencaroline <zenca...@gmail.com> napisał(a):

> At your possible convenience, might any expert please kindly answer
> my equestions? Thank you very much.
> I am suggested to use "R".
>

For what? Why R?

> 1) What is "R"?
>

A programming language bases on S language developed Insightful company.

> 2) Is it difficult to learn "R"?
>

It depends on the level you would like to use R. On the basic level
no, on advanced yes. According to me it is not very difficult but
has some peculiarities one should be aware of.

Best regards
--
[ Wit Jakuczun <W.Jakuczun [at] wlogsolutions.com> ]
[ WLOG Solutions http://www.wlogsolutions.com ]
[ Short offer: data mining, operational research,
time series forecasting, consulting ]

Wit Jakuczun

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 4:03:32 AM9/7/07
to
Dnia Thu, 06 Sep 2007 23:40:00 -0700
"ckx...@yahoo.com" <ckx...@yahoo.com> napisał(a):

> Not really a SAS question. If you type "R" (capital r) in Google,
> you'll get their website http://www.r-project.org/. The faq explains
> what R is. Basically, it's a statistical programming language.

It is a regular programming language with some syntactic sugars for
data processing.

> It's a good option if you want to experiment with new techniques,
> develop your own, or if you're on a low budget.
>

R could also be used as a efficient scripting language for
not-that-low-budget systems.

Gordon Sande

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 8:49:20 AM9/7/07
to
On 2007-09-07 05:07:18 -0300, Wit Jakuczun <w...@mefisto.hades> said:

> Dnia Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:50:06 -0000
> zencaroline <zenca...@gmail.com> napisał(a):
>
>> At your possible convenience, might any expert please kindly answer
>> my equestions? Thank you very much.
>> I am suggested to use "R".
>>
> For what? Why R?
>
>> 1) What is "R"?
>>
> A programming language bases on S language developed Insightful company.

Isn't that originally developed at Bell Labs and now supported by Insightful?

Kevin E. Thorpe

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 8:50:53 AM9/7/07
to
On Sep 7, 4:07 am, Wit Jakuczun <w...@mefisto.hades> wrote:
> Dnia Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:50:06 -0000
> zencaroline <zencarol...@gmail.com> napisa³(a):

>
> > 1) What is "R"?
>
> A programming language bases on S language developed Insightful company.

Actually, S was developed at Bell Labs. Insightful has purchased
the rights to the S language.

Wit Jakuczun

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 8:57:36 AM9/7/07
to
Dnia Fri, 07 Sep 2007 05:50:53 -0700
"Kevin E. Thorpe" <kevin....@utoronto.ca> napisaĹ (a):

> Actually, S was developed at Bell Labs. Insightful has purchased
> the rights to the S language.
>

I did not know that. Thanks you for correcting me.

JKPeck

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 5:46:43 PM9/7/07
to
For those who haven't heard, SPSS 16, shipping soon, lets you
integrate R into SPSS as well as Python. You can run R programs
within your SPSS syntax that read and write SPSS datasets. The R
output goes in the SPSS Viewer as plain text or pivot tables, and R
programs can read SPSS output (captured via OMS) and use it for
further computation.

There are about 30 apis that SPSS has implemented for use in the R
program within SPSS.

I will be talking about some of this at the upcoming SPSS Directions
conference in Orlando at the end of October (www.spss.com).

HTH,
Jon Peck

Wit Jakuczun

unread,
Sep 7, 2007, 8:26:31 PM9/7/07
to
Dnia Fri, 07 Sep 2007 21:46:43 -0000
JKPeck <JKP...@gmail.com> napisał(a):

> For those who haven't heard, SPSS 16, shipping soon, lets you
> integrate R into SPSS as well as Python.

Why it took you so long to integrate R and Python into your
software?


Best regards
--
[ Wit Jakuczun <W.Jakuczun [at] wlogsolutions.com> ]
[ WLOG Solutions http://www.wlogsolutions.com ]

nocturnal elephant

unread,
Sep 25, 2007, 11:37:21 PM9/25/07
to
i agree about its complexity. r is not user-friendly. too bad, there
are many very good analytical programs attached to it. which the r
team can come up with a windows version.

Anon.

unread,
Sep 26, 2007, 12:50:54 AM9/26/07
to
nocturnal elephant wrote:
> i agree about its complexity. r is not user-friendly. too bad, there
> are many very good analytical programs attached to it. which the r
> team can come up with a windows version.
>
Err, there is a Windows version. I use it on my laptop, which runs Windows.

If you mean a GUI, there are plenty of them for R:
<http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/>

Bob

--
Bob O'Hara
Department of Mathematics and Statistics
P.O. Box 68 (Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2b)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland

Telephone: +358-9-191 51479
Mobile: +358 50 599 0540
Fax: +358-9-191 51400
WWW: http://www.RNI.Helsinki.FI/~boh/
Blog: http://deepthoughtsandsilliness.blogspot.com/
Journal of Negative Results - EEB: www.jnr-eeb.org

Bruce Weaver

unread,
Sep 26, 2007, 7:27:37 AM9/26/07
to
Anon. wrote:
> nocturnal elephant wrote:
>> i agree about its complexity. r is not user-friendly. too bad, there
>> are many very good analytical programs attached to it. which the r
>> team can come up with a windows version.
>>
> Err, there is a Windows version. I use it on my laptop, which runs
> Windows.
>
> If you mean a GUI, there are plenty of them for R:
> <http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/>
>
> Bob
>


I saw some general info there, Bob, but no links to actual GUIs. The
one I'm aware of is John Fox's R Commander:

http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/


--
Bruce Weaver
bwe...@lakeheadu.ca
www.angelfire.com/wv/bwhomedir
"When all else fails, RTFM."

Anon.

unread,
Sep 26, 2007, 7:33:54 AM9/26/07
to
Bruce Weaver wrote:
> Anon. wrote:
>> nocturnal elephant wrote:
>>> i agree about its complexity. r is not user-friendly. too bad, there
>>> are many very good analytical programs attached to it. which the r
>>> team can come up with a windows version.
>>>
>> Err, there is a Windows version. I use it on my laptop, which runs
>> Windows.
>>
>> If you mean a GUI, there are plenty of them for R:
>> <http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/>
>>
>> Bob
>>
>
>
> I saw some general info there, Bob, but no links to actual GUIs. The
> one I'm aware of is John Fox's R Commander:
>
> http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/
>
It's under "Projects" in the menu on the left hand side, along with some
others. I'm happy with my command line, so I haven't explored them.

Bob

--
Bob O'Hara

Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics


P.O. Box 68 (Gustaf Hällströmin katu 2b)
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki
Finland

Journal of Negative Results - EEB: http://www.jnr-eeb.org

jmolineros

unread,
Sep 26, 2007, 9:12:40 AM9/26/07
to
Actually R is relatively easy to learn, especially if you've done SAS
before or are familiar with object oriented programming. A great
reference book, kind of the best basic tutorial I've found is Crawley's
book on an intro stats with R (it's very well written and easy to follow
for any skill level --> I used it as a textbook while teaching stat
computing for non-stat people) he also has the R book, which I recently
bought that has a lot more info, and is still well written. good luck

Julio

Brendan Halpin

unread,
Sep 26, 2007, 11:31:21 AM9/26/07
to
Check out this -- it's a video intro to R, GUI and all, just out
today:

http://www.decisionsciencenews.com/?p=261
--
Brendan Halpin, Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Ireland
Tel: w +353-61-213147 f +353-61-202569 h +353-61-338562; Room F2-025 x 3147
mailto:brendan...@ul.ie http://www.ul.ie/sociology/brendan.halpin.html

David Winsemius

unread,
Sep 27, 2007, 10:17:13 AM9/27/07
to
nocturnal elephant <berto....@gmail.com> wrote in
news:1190777841.1...@22g2000hsm.googlegroups.com:

> i agree about its complexity. r is not user-friendly. too bad, there
> are many very good analytical programs attached to it. which the r
> team can come up with a windows version.
>
> zencaroline wrote:

>>
>> 2) Is it difficult to learn "R"?
>>

A vote of disagreement. In my experience it was far easier to learn than
SAS and far easier to manage real data than with Minitab. I found it
comparable to GLIM for difficulty in learning.

--
David Winsemius

lobin

unread,
Feb 18, 2008, 4:36:39 PM2/18/08
to
0 new messages