R help - Apr 2005 - pointer to comments re Paul Murrell's new book, R, & SAS on Andrew Gelman's blog

There are some interesting comments re Paul Murrell's new book, R, & SAS
on Andrew Gelman's blog:

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2005/04/a_new_book_on_r.html

-- Tony Plate

Brief comment on blog.  S Plus is mentioned only in passing.  I've
always thought comparisons between SAS and R are invalid as they do
different things.  If I wasn't using R I'd be coding in either C or
Fortran.

SAS appears to be a database with statistical functionality attached. 

I've always thought that R being open source makes the results more
reliable.  There is nothing like having your name attached to something
to ensure it is correct.  Also if you have any doubts about the
calculations it is possible to look at the source to see exactly what is
going on.

While I'm here I'd like to thank the R Core group and ETH for providing
the harware for the mailing list.

Phineas Campbell
>>> Tony Plate <tplate at acm.org> 04/22/05 4:15 AM >>>
There are some interesting comments re Paul Murrell's new book, R, & SAS

on Andrew Gelman's blog:

http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2005/04/a_new_book_on_r.html

-- Tony Plate

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Tony Plate wrote:
> There are some interesting comments re Paul Murrell's new book, R,
& SAS
> on Andrew Gelman's blog:
> 
>
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2005/04/a_new_book_on_r.html
I found the comments quite interesting.  I also find it somewhat amusing 
when people speculate on what is necessary "if R truly wanted to compete 
in that space".  R doesn't "compete" with commercial
software.  As our
co-founder and resident sage, Ross Ihaka, characterizes our approach, 
"We have a simple 'marketing strategy' - we put the software out
there
for you to use.  If you decide to use it, that's great.  If not, that's 
ok too."