Latex and R are really cool stuff. I am just wondering how they are used in industry. But based on my own experience, very rare. Why? How about the opinion of other listers? Thanks.
my favorite answer to this question is "because there is no one to sue." url: www.econ.uiuc.edu/~roger Roger Koenker email rkoenker at uiuc.edu Department of Economics vox: 217-333-4558 University of Illinois fax: 217-244-6678 Champaign, IL 61820 On Apr 6, 2005, at 10:38 AM, Wensui Liu wrote:> Latex and R are really cool stuff. I am just wondering how they are > used in industry. But based on my own experience, very rare. Why? > > How about the opinion of other listers? Thanks. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide! > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
On Wed, 2005-04-06 at 11:38 -0400, Wensui Liu wrote:> Latex and R are really cool stuff. I am just wondering how they are > used in industry. But based on my own experience, very rare. Why? > > How about the opinion of other listers? Thanks.As Tony has referenced, the answer will depend upon what industry you are referring to. There is an article in R News (2004 Vol 4 Number 1) that you might find of interest entitled "The Decision to Use R" from a small medical consulting business perspective: http://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/Rnews_2004-1.pdf There is a persistent rumor of a similar article from a large corporate medical industry environment that is due "real soon now"... ;-) You might also want to search the r-help archives as there have been some fairly "lively" discussions on this in the recent past, especially in healthcare applications when a certain other Statistical Analysis System is referenced as being the perceived standard... HTH, Marc> library(fortunes) > fortune("Schwartz")I use R. My company benefits from it. My clients benefit from it. ...and I sleep just fine (when I do sleep)... :-) -- Marc Schwartz, Medanalytics (about the `costs' of free software) R-help (June 2004)
It appears that more than a few people posting on this list are from industry... I use R for research into signal/image analysis and tomography. Most people doing this use Matlab. I prefer R for several reasons. First, I'm a long-time S user. Second, I'm involved in the administration and in this respect R is far more straightforward than Matlab. I really appreciate the effort that goes into making R configurable. R can be built on essentially anything, in several ways, to suit; Matlab is quite limited in the platforms it supports, and you pretty much take what you get. Third, R is very flexible and open and easy to customize. Reid Huntsinger -----Original Message----- From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Wensui Liu Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 11:39 AM To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch Subject: [R] off-topic question: Latex and R in industries Latex and R are really cool stuff. I am just wondering how they are used in industry. But based on my own experience, very rare. Why? How about the opinion of other listers? Thanks. ______________________________________________ R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
I think there may be a bit of an "us vs. them" perception in business as it views academia (and R is a product of academia). I discussed the use of R with a businessman not long ago and he raised two objections to its use. First, "if they give it away for free, how good can it be? After all, you get what you pay for," and, second, "Without a dedicated company standing behind it to take care problems and fix bugs, how can there be any quality control?" (I asked him if he had ever heard of Microsoft.) Ben Fairbank -----Original Message----- From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Wensui Liu Sent: Wednesday, April 06, 2005 10:39 AM To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch Subject: [R] off-topic question: Latex and R in industries Latex and R are really cool stuff. I am just wondering how they are used in industry. But based on my own experience, very rare. Why? How about the opinion of other listers? Thanks. ______________________________________________ R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
Wensui, I work for 'A' electronics test equipment corporation. I have been using R ( since 1.6 ) instead of MATLAB etc. as a general language for data analysis and graph generation. On they way to R I tried Python/Scipy, Scilab and others - but R wins in quality and ease of use (it just needs DSP and GPIB/HPIB libraries to be perfect ). LaTeX is also my document tool of choice .. However LaTeX generated pdfs sent out as reports are much disliked. MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel are the standards, and very importantly they offer cut and paste ability across the larger team. MS's offerings comes no where near to the quality of LaTex / R, but in world of shared authorship - it's a one sided battle. My other PC universe vs Unix/OS X problem is vector / Meta-file graphics - essential for quality reports. Postscript, PDF and MS products just don't play. The newest Office and Visio versions seem to be dropping even more of the postscript import and export filters ( which never work very well anyway ). I have never met any other colleagues who use LaTeX or R. Any one else sharing the same experiences ? >> Message: 37 Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 11:38:55 -0400 From: Wensui Liu <liuwensui at gmail.com> Subject: [R] off-topic question: Latex and R in industries To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch Message-ID: <1115a2b00504060838506d00dc at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Latex and R are really cool stuff. I am just wondering how they are used in industry. But based on my own experience, very rare. Why? How about the opinion of other listers? Thanks.
Hi Bert and Jonathan, When I want a quality report - I write it with pdfLaTeX ( TexShop or TeXnicCenter) with postscript generated diagrams and R plots as pdf's - ( so I can use PC / UNIX / OS X inter-changeably with no problems ) The quality and readability of the pdf document is liked but, and it's a big but is ..... When someone else in the team needs to extract quality vector graphics from the report, I have to give it to them in powerpoint or word document , which means running R again on a PC to get WMF's. Not impossible just extra work. ( Is there a universal vector format I could use ? ) However, and this is probably off topic-R, when I use drawings / schematics in native postscript from a Unix box, using them is fine in LaTeX, but they can't be pasted into MS applications without first rasterizing. The other option I tried - Ghostview seems to mess up line angles and fonts in attempting conversion into WMF. ( If anyone knows a way to avoid this, I will be forever grateful ) My problems - are not R but with general UNIX - PC interoperability Thanks for the nsf links - it's good to see Latex accepted, I also think the IEEE takes LaTeX, but for the business world it's Word only. Donald On 7 Apr 2005, at 22:56, Jonathan Baron wrote:> On 04/07/05 22:46, Donald Ingram wrote: > However LaTeX generated pdfs sent out as reports are much disliked. > > Really? I don't have this problem. It may have something to do > with how you make them. With TeTeX, I use either pdflatex or > dvips followed by dvipdfm. The latter is required when I have > figures in eps. (ps2pdf is BAD.) > > I believe that these meet the standards of NSF > (http://www.fastlane.nsf.gov). Unfortunately, > https://www.fastlane.nsf.gov/servlet/faq.Faq; > jsessionid=a8301381731112910739147?areaIndex=3&faqIndex=12 > now recommends that you just send the dvi file. They have given > up on the possibility of users getting it right, but I think this > is what they do. > > But all my papers on http://papers.ssrn.com are done this way. > > Jon > -- > Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania > Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baronOn 7 Apr 2005, at 22:56, Berton Gunter wrote:> ?? > R and MS coexist quite nicely. I frequently import R graphics as > .wmf's into > e.g. Word and Powerpoint. So I don't understand your remarks. > > Of course, there's no question about R's superiority for data analysis, > graphs, etc. from any MS product. Incidentally, it is possible to use > R via > DCOM to generate data analyses and plots within Excel -- I don't know > enough > to be able to do this myself, but I know it can be done. > > -- Bert Gunter > Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics > South San Francisco, CA > > "The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific > learning > process." - George E. P. Box > > > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: r-help-bounces@stat.math.ethz.ch >> [mailto:r-help-bounces@stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Donald Ingram >> Sent: Thursday, April 07, 2005 2:46 PM >> To: r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch >> Subject: Re: [R] off-topic question: Latex and R in industries >> >> Wensui, >> >> I work for 'A' electronics test equipment corporation. >> I have been using R ( since 1.6 ) instead of MATLAB etc. as a general >> language for data analysis and graph generation. >> On they way to R I tried Python/Scipy, Scilab and others - >> but R wins >> in quality and ease of use (it just needs DSP and GPIB/HPIB >> libraries >> to be perfect ). >> >> LaTeX is also my document tool of choice .. >> >> However LaTeX generated pdfs sent out as reports are much disliked. >> >> MS Word, PowerPoint and Excel are the standards, and very importantly >> they offer cut and paste ability across the larger team. >> MS's offerings comes no where near to the quality of LaTex / >> R, but in >> world of shared authorship - it's a one sided battle. >> >> My other PC universe vs Unix/OS X problem is vector / Meta-file >> graphics - essential for quality reports. >> Postscript, PDF and MS products just don't play. The newest >> Office and >> Visio versions seem to be dropping even more of the postscript >> import and export filters ( which never work very well anyway ). >> >> I have never met any other colleagues who use LaTeX or R. >> >> Any one else sharing the same experiences ? >> >> >>>> >> >> Message: 37 >> Date: Wed, 6 Apr 2005 11:38:55 -0400 >> From: Wensui Liu <liuwensui@gmail.com> >> Subject: [R] off-topic question: Latex and R in industries >> To: r-help@stat.math.ethz.ch >> Message-ID: <1115a2b00504060838506d00dc@mail.gmail.com> >> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 >> >> Latex and R are really cool stuff. I am just wondering how they are >> used in industry. But based on my own experience, very rare. Why? >> >> How about the opinion of other listers? Thanks. >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list >> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >> PLEASE do read the posting guide! >> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >> > >[[alternative text/enriched version deleted]]
Donald Ingram wrote:> ( Is there a universal vector format I could use ? )If there were one, you can be sure that Microsoft would take steps to corrupt their implementation of the ``universal'' format so that material produced by non-Microsoft software would be unusable by Microsoft software. Microsoft's goal is to create an effective ***monopoly*** for themselves. People being the idiots that they are, Microsoft is succeeding admirably.> My problems - are not R but with general UNIX - PC interoperabilityThis terminology is incorrect and misleading. It is not a ``PC'' problem --- the PC is the hardware on which any software/operating system can run. UNIX (in the guise of Linux) runs on PCs. The problem is the Micrsoft Windoze operating system, which goes out of its way to be incompatible with everything else. cheers, Rolf Turner rolf at math.unb.ca