[R] how do i persuade IT to install R on PCs ?? ...and should I ??
frenchcr
Please help me persuade IT to install R on my computer!
All suggestions welcome.
Our IT department run scared when you mention software that they have no
working experience of.
I need to know the pros and cons of having R on corporate desktops.
Please no funny stuff, this is quite a serious issue for us.
Pros and cons would be good.
Thanks.
--
View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/how-do-i-persuade-IT-to-install-R-on-PCs----...and-should-I----tp26464163p26464163.html
Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
______________________________________________
R-h...@r-project.org mailing list
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
Marc Schwartz
>
>
> Please help me persuade IT to install R on my computer!
>
> All suggestions welcome.
>
> Our IT department run scared when you mention software that they
> have no
> working experience of.
>
> I need to know the pros and cons of having R on corporate desktops.
>
> Please no funny stuff, this is quite a serious issue for us.
>
> Pros and cons would be good.
>
> Thanks.
You need to define how R will meet and preferably enhance whatever
functional requirements you have as compared to alternatives that are
either already installed or that your IT folks are considering. How
will R enhance your ability to meet the needs of the internal and/or
external consumers of your analytic services?
Typically, arguments based solely on costs (eg. R is free) will fall
on deaf ears in IT, since there is the likelihood that your R
installations will require some level of support from them, thus
having a real cost in time and money. Are your R installations going
to need to interface with other platforms such as database servers,
etc? What security and server/network access implications will it
have? What other supporting applications will you require to use with
R (eg. editors, Perl, LaTeX, C/FORTAN compilers and related tools,
etc.) that will increase support and maintenance requirements?
Who is going to support R as problems occur and updates are needed?
Most IT departments are used to paying for support to a commercial
vendor. Somebody that they can call when things go wrong. They may not
be used to getting support from mailing lists. Yes, there are
commercial variants of R that address that issue and that may be
something to consider depending upon the specifics of your situation.
What knowledge does your IT department have of open source development
and support? Is Linux being used on servers or workstations? Even if
they are using a commercial Linux installation (eg. Red Hat), they may
be more comfortable with the general concept of open source, which may
be part of the battle that you are facing.
Is there an alternative to installing on local desktops versus
considering a central installation on a server? The former magnifies
the time and workload requirements to IT for installing and
maintaining over a larger number of computers. The latter enables a
more centralized and possibly more efficient IT approach to this.
What, if any, issues are there in converting existing code and
processes that are implemented using other applications to R? What if
any code reviews and functional validations will be required,
resulting in real costs associated with those processes?
There are not only direct costs, but indirect costs and opportunity
costs associated with moving to and using R. You are going to require
some level of support from them for R, which means they will have less
time and resources for other activities.
This becomes a control, political, economic and potentially even a
legal issue. Over the years, as desktop PC's became common, there was
a decentralization and dilution of IT involvement from the old
mainframe/minicomputer days. That trend has been reversing for some
time in most corporate environments, such that IT is taking a much
more proactive role in controlling technology decision making, support
and access across the IT spectrum. That includes driving corporate
policies regarding applications, hardware, security, mobile platforms
(laptops, smart phones, etc.) and is influenced by a variety of
factors, not the least of which can be risk management, regulatory and
related issues.
An incremental approach is something to consider. Install R on one
desktop machine or a server and let your IT folks become comfortable
with it, before moving to a larger scale implementation if you are
looking beyond just your one desktop.
In addition, sell your manager(s) on R to gain their support and
influence on the decision making process, therefore helping to
politically bolster your arguments. It is known as "managing up" and
can be an important part of the strategy in gaining IT's support,
presuming that your managers are in a position of influence with IT.
It would be difficult to provide detailed guidance to you without more
information on your specific environment, but hopefully the above
provides food for thought, at least in the abstract.
Cheers,
Marc Schwartz
Ben Bolker
>
>
> Please help me persuade IT to install R on my computer!
>
> All suggestions welcome.
>
> Our IT department run scared when you mention software that they have no
> working experience of.
>
> I need to know the pros and cons of having R on corporate desktops.
>
> Please no funny stuff, this is quite a serious issue for us.
>
> Pros and cons would be good.
>
> Thanks.
You can probably expect to get some "funny stuff" along with
any useful advice you do get.
It is almost impossible to answer this question without
knowing what you want to use R for!
You could tell your IT department that R is easy to install
and well-behaved (i.e. it is self-contained and doesn't do
nasty things to system libraries etc.), that it doesn't "phone
home" or need to talk to servers outside your environment
(unless you program it to, or unless you try to download &
install additional packages), that it is used by a very wide
range of reputable companies (see a variety of discussions on
this list, or see http://www.r-project.org/foundation/memberlist.html ),
... but the most important thing should presumably be whether
it helps you do your job ... The license is unrestrictive,
unless you want to redistribute a modified version, in which
case it requires you to provide source code and allow
redistribution ...
Cons: like any software, it takes time and space to
install (although not very much). R develops rapidly
and there is little support for "obsolete" versions.
The software comes without support, but you can pay for
third-party support.
RICHARD M. HEIBERGER
http://www.r-project.org/doc/R-FDA.pdf
and ask your IT department to read this document
Rich
stephen's mailinglist account
I requested to have R installed at work.
For me it helped that I have a lot of non-standard technical packages anyway
that are off radar for support from the IT department anyway - they only
support for original install rights anyway.
They wanted to know what the licence was - GPL is recognised and they don't
run a mile.
I did my homework and found some other people on a company research site
were already using R so I could use that as justification.
I had some code ready to run that could produce graphs easily that are very
hard to do in Excel and require a lot of custom code (and even then aren't
good).
We do use some other stats packages anyway and are being encouraged to use
proper packages rather than kludging through in Excel
References like this (below) have been circulated at work which adds weight
to arguments that we should not just accept the 'standard' Office install.
Although I did not use this in my justification.
@ARTICLE{,
author = {B.D. McCullough and David A. Heiser},
title = {On the accuracy of statistical procedures in Microsoft Excel
2007},
journal = {Computational Statistics \& Data Analysis},
year = {2008},
volume = {52},
pages = {4570--4578},
number = {10}
}
( http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csda.2008.03.004)
I use R via TINN-R (http://www.sciviews.org/Tinn-R/) on a Windows desktop.
Stephen
[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
David Winsemius
I'm not surprised to see McCollough and Heiser's names on such an
article. They have both a long track record of pointing out Excel's
statistical deficiencies. (I don't they did so together in the past.)
MS has turned a deaf ear to their efforts to point the way to correct
methods. It is truly amazing that MS continues to ignore constrictive
criticism and that such arrogance is compounded by corporate policies
encouraging reliance on demonstrably faulty tools. The full list of
articles documenting MS's resistance to statistical corrections would
be much longer that just this one article and extends back more than a
decade.
> title = {On the accuracy of statistical procedures in Microsoft Excel
> 2007},
> journal = {Computational Statistics \& Data Analysis},
> year = {2008},
> volume = {52},
> pages = {4570--4578},
> number = {10}
> }
>
> ( http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csda.2008.03.004)
> I use R via TINN-R (http://www.sciviews.org/Tinn-R/) on a Windows
> desktop.
>
> Stephen
--
David Winsemius, MD
Heritage Laboratories
West Hartford, CT
stephen's mailinglist account
>
> On Nov 22, 2009, at 4:45 PM, stephen's mailinglist account wrote:
>
> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 11:14 AM, frenchcr <fren...@btinternet.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Please help me persuade IT to install R on my computer!
>>>
>>> All suggestions welcome.
>>>
>>> Our IT department run scared when you mention software that they have no
>>> working experience of.
>>>
>>> I need to know the pros and cons of having R on corporate desktops.
>>>
>>> Please no funny stuff, this is quite a serious issue for us.
>>>
>>> Pros and cons would be good.
>>>
>>> Thanks.
>>> --
>>> View this message in context:
>>>
>>> http://old.nabble.com/how-do-i-persuade-IT-to-install-R-on-PCs----...and-should-I----tp26464163p26464163.html
>>> Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
>>>
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-h...@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<http://www.r-project.org/posting-guide.html>
Further similar articles can be found at
http://www.practicalstats.com/xlsstats/excelstats.html and in the same issue
of Computional Statistics and data analysis
regards
Stephen
[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________
David Winsemius
On Nov 23, 2009, at 7:47 AM, stephen's mailinglist account wrote:
>
> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 11:15 PM, David Winsemius <dwins...@comcast.net
> > wrote:
>
> On Nov 22, 2009, at 4:45 PM, stephen's mailinglist account wrote:
>
> On Sun, Nov 22, 2009 at 11:14 AM, frenchcr <fren...@btinternet.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>
> Please help me persuade IT to install R on my computer!
>
> All suggestions welcome.
>
> Our IT department run scared when you mention software that they
> have no
> working experience of.
>
> I need to know the pros and cons of having R on corporate desktops.
>
> Please no funny stuff, this is quite a serious issue for us.
>
> Pros and cons would be good.
>
> Thanks.
> --
> --
>
> David Winsemius, MD
>
>
>
> Further similar articles can be found at http://www.practicalstats.com/xlsstats/excelstats.html
> and in the same issue of Computional Statistics and data analysis
It was a good read. We had a recent example submitted to r-help where
I had occasion to test their "solution 2" (use OO.org' Calc) and found
it to be just as bad at curve fitting for a polynomial as had been
Excel. Take a look at the pdf attached to this r-help item:
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2009-November/218005.html
>
> regards
> Stephen
David Winsemius, MD
Heritage Laboratories
West Hartford, CT
Barry Rowlingson
> It was a good read. We had a recent example submitted to r-help where
> I had occasion to test their "solution 2" (use OO.org' Calc) and found
> it to be just as bad at curve fitting for a polynomial as had been
> Excel. Take a look at the pdf attached to this r-help item:
>
> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2009-November/218005.html
Well, the OO.org guys are trying to make something compatible with a
piece of MS software, but maybe this is taking it too far.
I love the story that sections of Microsoft XML spec for Office says
things like "Do whatever Excel does", thus setting into stone the bugs
inherent in that package as an ISO standard...
Barry
Marc Schwartz
On Nov 23, 2009, at 7:24 AM, Barry Rowlingson wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 1:01 PM, David Winsemius <dwins...@comcast.net
> > wrote:
>
>> It was a good read. We had a recent example submitted to r-help where
>> I had occasion to test their "solution 2" (use OO.org' Calc) and
>> found
>> it to be just as bad at curve fitting for a polynomial as had been
>> Excel. Take a look at the pdf attached to this r-help item:
>>
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2009-November/218005.html
>
> Well, the OO.org guys are trying to make something compatible with a
> piece of MS software, but maybe this is taking it too far.
>
> I love the story that sections of Microsoft XML spec for Office says
> things like "Do whatever Excel does", thus setting into stone the bugs
> inherent in that package as an ISO standard...
>
> Barry
Just to reinforce Baz' statement about OO.org, for those who have been
around here for a while, you may recall this discussion back in 2003:
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2003-June/034565.html
https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2003-June/034860.html
Nothing has changed since then in OO.org's Calc version 3.1.1, which
is the current release.
On OSX, I can add Numbers from Apple's iWork '09 the mix:
Formula: =4.145 * 100 + 0.5
Result: 415.000000000000000000000000000000
Formula: =0.5 - 0.4 - 0.1
Result: -0.000000000000000027755575615629
Formula: =(0.5 - 0.4 - 0.1)
Result: -0.000000000000000027755575615629
So FWIW, Apple has not made the same errors as MS and OO.org, at least
in this narrow example.
Also, here are two additional Excel resources:
David Heiser's page: http://www.daheiser.info/excel/frontpage.html
Patrick Burns' Spreadsheet Addition: http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html
HTH,
Marc Schwartz