11–20 of 42 posts
It is still going strong in bioinformatics/genomics. I think it's slower and clunkier than the alternatives, but for stats and graphics it's pretty easy for scientists to learn...
I wonder - could R in theory be rewritten as a Python library? If not, why not? Is there any special syntax of R that makes it more amenable to statistical analysis than Python? Performance concerns? It's just a shame to see a whole language popping out of something that could just be a library.
You mean like numpy/scipy/matplot lib?
R works for me right now so that's what I'll stick to.
I'm a non-IT employee (but with a comp-sci background) working in the insurance sector, and I'm currently managing R adoption for a group of about 30 business analysts with minimal programming background. Programming in the business world is screwed up beyond all imagination. The more money a given application is responsible for, the more likely it is that it's a house-of-cards (pun intended for MVS nerds). They're a…
I'm familiar with exactly the same phenomemon in the hardware verification world, where new tools and languages keep being invented just so that validation engineers can relax that they're not expected to "program" in a real language.
I wonder - could R in theory be rewritten as a Python library? If not, why not? Is there any special syntax of R that makes it more amenable to statistical analysis than Python? Performance concerns? It's just a shame to see a whole language popping out of something that could just be a library.
I'm a non-IT employee (but with a comp-sci background) working in the insurance sector, and I'm currently managing R adoption for a group of about 30 business analysts with minimal programming background. Programming in the business world is screwed up beyond all imagination. The more money a given application is responsible for, the more likely it is that it's a house-of-cards (pun intended for MVS nerds). They're a…
I recall that SQL was intended to be used by business people... and it probably has been, sometimes; but I don't think it happens much. The days of early adoption might have differed, through appealing to the more adventurous business people (as R might be now).
One thing I know for a fact: business people use spreadsheets. I think making something that easy to get things done in is an incredible achievement. As an example, I think PHP has approached but not attained it.
It's attractive to embed into databases like Neteeza, Teradata and other analytic databases, and vastly easier to use than SAS.
Even if it was rewritten in python, I think that would be unlikely to slow down it's adoption, which is driven by grad-students, researchers and quants who often have no real programming background (and frequently aren't interested in learning more than they need to generate figures for their publications).
I'm a non-IT employee (but with a comp-sci background) working in the insurance sector, and I'm currently managing R adoption for a group of about 30 business analysts with minimal programming background. Programming in the business world is screwed up beyond all imagination. The more money a given application is responsible for, the more likely it is that it's a house-of-cards (pun intended for MVS nerds). They're a…
Is it really true that business people use R directly? Being in Forbes is consistent with it... I recall that SQL was intended to be used by business people... and it probably has been, sometimes; but I don't think it happens much. The days of early adoption might have differed, through appealing to the more adventurous business people (as R might be now). One thing I know for a fact: business people use spreadsheets…
Incanter is a project worth checking out if you use R I believe.
We propose developing an R-like language on top of a Lisp-based engine for statistical computing that provides a paradigm for modern challenges and which leverages the work of a wider community. - Ross Ihaka (co-developed the R statistical programming language with Robert Gentleman) and Duncan Temple Lang (core developer of R)