R help - Nov 1998 - [Johannes Huesing <tmi0m0@sp2.power.uni-essen.de>] Media coverage

Johannes Huesing sent a message to stat-lisp-news at stat.umn.edu
regarding an article in Linux-Magazin (German) on statistical software
for Linux.  I enclose excerpts.

Can anyone summarize what was said about R in the article?  If there
is a web site for the article I would appreciate learning of the URL.
I must admit, though, the my abilities in German are much less
impressive than the abilities in English of most of the native
German-speakers in this group.  A summary in English would be most welcome.

------- Start of forwarded message -------
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 1998 08:29:20 +0100 (MEZ)
From: Johannes Huesing <tmi0m0 at sp2.power.uni-essen.de>
To: stat-lisp-news at stat.umn.edu
Subject: Media coverage 

The periodical Linux-Magazin, which is the only periodical devoted
to Linux in German language, has dedicated a 13-page article to
statistical software available in Linux. One and a half pages were
dedicated to ViSta.
[material deleted]

It is worth mentioning that only R got more coverage in the article than
ViSta (other programs being Splus, Stata, P-Stat, PSPP, XploRe).
[more material deleted]
------- End of forwarded message -------
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Douglas> Can anyone summarize what was said about R in the article?  If
  Douglas> there is a web site for the article I would appreciate learning of
  Douglas> the URL.  

The general URL is www.linux-magazin.de, but it seems that this article is
not online.

-- 
Linux is not only free; it is, arguably, a better operating system, offering
a degree of stability and an ability to scale up that NT cannot match.
                                             -- The Economist, Oct 3, 1998
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Douglas Bates <bates at stat.wisc.edu> wrote:
> Can anyone summarize what was said about R in the article?
[from Linux Magazin]

The article is a survey of software for statistics ("Statistical data
analysis with Linux"). The author (Dr. Wenzel Matiaske,
<wm at perform.ww.tu-berlin.de>, address according to Linux Magazin)
gives informations about

      P-STAT
      Stata     
      S-Plus 5
      XploRe
      ViSta (and XLisp-Stat)
      R (0.62.2)
      PSPP (FIASCO)

I haven't time to translate everything (and that's better for the
native English speaker, anyway ;-) ...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

About R he says (summarised!!): R is like XploRe a statistical
programming language and system for graphical and numerical data
analysis. Was written by ... similar to S ... can use code written for
S and S' documentation ... existence of CRAN ... availability as
deb/rpm package, additional libraries are on CRAN, too ... some
installation hints (FORTRAN translator, Perl5 necessary). R has a
simple interactive user interface ... demo ()/help () ... more
comfortable emacs interface exists ... graphical representation
possible with Xgobi (screen-shot with emacs & Xgobi). As example of R
there is a box with code showing how to make a histogram, a
correlation analysis and a linear regression; the code is explained in
the text. Number of existing procedures is considered impressive
... base package contains all possibilities of univariate analysis and
many methods for statistical modelling (linear Model, generalised
linear model) ... in the libraries there are: ctests, tree, cluster,
eda, mva, multiv, MASS (purpose of the modules is explained
shortly). Something is still missing: "Kreuztabellenanalyse" -- cross
table analysis? --, MANOVA, factor analysis, general additive
models. But the number of functions is increasing, and there are
Fortran/C interfaces. R not tailored to data storing, importing,
report generation, in this respect needs help of a database or another
data analysis system.

The author summarises: XploRe and R are recommended as programming
environments and contain the biggest number of statistical models
(there is a table comparing all programs by supported statistical
methods and user interface facilities).

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Please excuse for translation errors and misunderstandings (I'm no
expert in statistics!).

Hope it helps ...
Ulf

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