Hi,> -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch> Dear all, > Is there a camera rotation for 3d graphics in R. I have seen it in a > conference one time and thought it is pretty neat. the > presenter was able > to rotate the 3d graph with dragging the mouse up down left > right. If not > in R is there something that is open source that does this.Do you mean Daniel Adler's rgl (http://wsopuppenkiste.wiso.uni-goettingen.de/~dadler/) or the Ggobi/Rggobi http://www.ggobi.org/? Kevin -------------------------------------------- Ko-Kang Kevin Wang, MSc(Hon) SLC Stats Workshops Co-ordinator The University of Auckland New Zealand
Dear all, Is there a camera rotation for 3d graphics in R. I have seen it in a conference one time and thought it is pretty neat. the presenter was able to rotate the 3d graph with dragging the mouse up down left right. If not in R is there something that is open source that does this. Thank you Jean Eid
On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 09:19, Paul Gilbert wrote:> Ko-Kang Kevin Wang wrote: > > >It is not only used by statisticians or scientists, > >but also econometricians and people in finance due to its cost (FREE) > >and its powerfulness. > > > I think "(FREE)" will distract your intended audience from the real > point. In a corporate environment, lots of people argue that free > software actually costs more than commercial software because of > internal support cost, etc, etc. These arguments will all hinge > critically on the corporate IT support abilities. For R, I have never > seen a convincing argument that it costs more, but the real point is > that this is irrelevant. If it costs less, that is nice. If it costs > more, then that is what you pay to use something that is better. If they > need to, I think people in finance are generally willing to pay, so I > think it is a mistake to put much emphasis on the cost. Put the emphasis > on how good it is.I agree that quality and value are important, but I think that the issue of cost should not be discounted out of hand. Value (for both company and client) is directly tied to cost. Cost may be less of a concern for very large corporations to some extent, though certainly non-trivial as we continue to see companies finding ways to reduce their cost of operations as an important part of the strategy to improve profitability. Typically, this is done via reductions in personnel costs (ie. layoffs, reductions in benefits, salary/wage cuts, etc.), but IT costs are surely a target as is noted daily/weekly/monthly in various IT and business trade rags. IT costs are not just those associated with the initial purchase, but with ongoing operating costs as well. I can speak from personal experience, as the President and Owner of a health care consulting business who has funded this operation with my own funds, that cost is a significant issue. I do not have shareholders or private investors providing operating capital with the promise of future returns on their investments. Every dollar I spend has to be recovered via client billings or it comes out of my own pocket. This is not just important for me, but for my clients as well. The more I spend on "the cost of doing business", the more that I would have to pass on to my clients to recoup those same costs. My ability to offer clients reasonable project fees is directly correlated to my underlying cost structure. There is a market driven threshold beyond which I could not pass those costs on to clients and still have clients willing to pay for services. A product like SAS for example, which I had previously used for a number of years working for a larger medical software company, is no longer affordable to me as a small business owner. The last time that I checked, the annual licensing for a single user commercial license for Base, Stat and Graph was in the neighborhood of $5,000 U.S. **Per Year**. That is for _one person_. Calculate those costs for a larger staff... Even a product such as that other "R like" commercial offering, while less costly than SAS, still adds to overhead. I would rather allocate the funds for that product along with my time, to supporting the R Foundation and this community to repay the value and benefit that I receive from it (which is nothing short of phenomenal). The bottom line is that cost is a non-trivial issue. If a company is willing to pay more for a functionally equivalent product, because the training and support is (or is perceived to be) superior so be it. That may enable managers and other decision makers to sleep better at night. I would however challenge the level of support provided by any commercial company to that which is provided by this community, given the depth and breadth of expertise present and the expedience with which communications take place here. I use R. My company benefits from it. My clients benefit from it. ..and I sleep just fine (when I do sleep)... :-) Regards, Marc Schwartz
On Fri, Jun 04, 2004 at 11:06:59AM -0500, Marc Schwartz wrote:> I agree that quality and value are important, but I think that the issue > of cost should not be discounted out of hand. Value (for both company > and client) is directly tied to cost. > > [...] > > The bottom line is that cost is a non-trivial issue. If a company is > willing to pay more for a functionally equivalent product, because the > training and support is (or is perceived to be) superior so be it. That > may enable managers and other decision makers to sleep better at night.I agree with your points. However, as far as I remember, the original poster wants to give a 2-3 minute summary about the benefits of R. I would not open such a complicated issue (the total cost of ownership) in such a small timeframe, but focus on the more "technical" benefits instead. Best, Tamas -- Tam??s K. Papp E-mail: tpapp at axelero.hu Please try to send only (latin-2) plain text, not HTML or other garbage.
Marc Schwartz wrote:>On Fri, 2004-06-04 at 09:19, Paul Gilbert wrote: > > >>Ko-Kang Kevin Wang wrote: >> >> >> >>>It is not only used by statisticians or scientists, >>>but also econometricians and people in finance due to its cost (FREE) >>>and its powerfulness. >>> >>> >>> >>I think "(FREE)" will distract your intended audience from the real >>point. In a corporate environment, lots of people argue that free >>software actually costs more than commercial software because of >>internal support cost, etc, etc. These arguments will all hinge >>critically on the corporate IT support abilities. For R, I have never >>seen a convincing argument that it costs more, but the real point is >>that this is irrelevant. If it costs less, that is nice. If it costs >>more, then that is what you pay to use something that is better. If they >>need to, I think people in finance are generally willing to pay, so I >>think it is a mistake to put much emphasis on the cost. Put the emphasis >>on how good it is. >> >> > > >I agree that quality and value are important, but I think that the issue >of cost should not be discounted out of hand. Value (for both company >and client) is directly tied to cost. > >[snip ...] Marc I agree with this, and most of what you say. Cost is important in both large and small companies, and also in government. The point is really that total cost of ownership is a very complicate thing, and you should not get into it without the specifics of a particular company and situation in mind. For example, if the end users takes responsibility for all the support, the cost implications will be very different from the situation where the IT department needs to guarantee availability. Even in your own company you may have a very different attitude with respect to your research software and your accounts receivable software. People in finance making real time market decisions will have a very different cost structure from academics in finance. The point was really that many people are very sensitive to arguments about cost, and often have positions that they feel obliged to promote. So, as soon as you mention cost you are likely to get into a very long discussion that will not be fruitful unless you are prepared to talk about very particular situations. For this particular audience I think it would probably be more to the point to describe how good and reliable R is. A particular company may decided R is just too expensive. For example, some companies in finance are worried about real time decision making. They may have to hire 10 more IT staff to guarantee 24/7 availaility with no more than 5 minutes outage per week whereas, with commercial software, they may be able to buy guarantees. (This is not a statement about commercial software being more reliable, it is a statement about being able to buy insurance.) But, as you say, for must of us R is a real bargain. Paul
Thank you very much to those who contributed to this rather interesting discussion/debate. I was very surprised (and almost overwhelmed) by the volume of replies based on this topic! I have prepared some slides and put the draft version on www.stat.auckland.ac.nz/~kwan022/tmp/RFin.ppt. Feel free to download a copy if you are interested in what I am planning to use -- of course, any more suggestions are welcome but remember, it will only be a 1 ~ 2 minute talk on R *_* Cheers, Kevin