Just wanted to pass on the good words I hear about R. Last week someone posted a general question about time series packages in the political science research methods list and I trolled for a flamewar by asking why everybody doesn''t use R, the open source high quality program. Interestingly enough, no flame war ensued. One person rather feebly asserted he''d rather not have open source because he did not feel qualified to read code, but several others added very strong words for R. One person said "I use R extensively for both statistical and computational work, and I highly recommend the package. It usually manages memory *far* better than the other famous implementation of the S language. Having the source code is a great thing. If there is a function which is too slow or doesn''t do exactly what one wants done, one can change the R source code or link in one''s own preferred C/C++ or Fortran object. The benefits of being able to learn from and modify the source code cannot be underestimated. Would any one of us trust an estimator which was a black box? Would we use it just because the inventor said: "trust me the estimator actually *does* work, but I can''t tell you in detail how because of intellectual property concerns"? Why should we adopt a different standard for the numerical algorithms we use?" While another added " In response to your well-put comments below, I use R virtually everyday after years of using Splus. Other than the Trellis graphics (which make everything look like Bill Cleveland did it), there is very little that R does not have over Splus, and R has better scoping rules within functions. The best part is that you can take your Splus code and run it on R generally without modification. So in addition to the free and open part you mention, there is considerable power and near complete compatibility with the de facto package for research statisticians" Just thought you''d get a happy feeling to hear some good words from a neutral audience. -- Paul E. Johnson email: pauljohn at ukans.edu Dept. of Political Science http://lark.cc.ukans.edu/~pauljohn University of Kansas Office: (785) 864-9086 Lawrence, Kansas 66045 FAX: (785) 864-5700 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._