Ali - <saveez <at> hotmail.com> writes:
> R introduces itself as a 'statistical' language and environment.
There are
> many discussions about comparing R to MATLAB or mathematica (or other
> similar software). It seems to me that these other software have a broader
> range of applications. For example, in Mathematica one can solve a partial
> differential equation numberically or do image processing, or, one can
> connect a data acquisition card to MATLAB to acquire data from a
measurement
> and analyse the results.
>
> - Does R already provide such facilities?
some ...
RSiteSearch("image analysis")
http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02a/archive/69200.html
RSiteSearch("PDE") -- suggests not much in the way
of numeric PDE solutions
RSiteSearch("data acquisition") -- suggests not much (but see
http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02a/archive/81317.html )
> - Was R design to be merely a statistical tool or was it designed with an
> idea of a general mathematical tool in mind?
It was designed as a "language and environment for statistical computing
and
graphics". However, since it provides interfaces to routines written
in other languages (Tcl/Tk, C, Fortran, ...) and other programs
(databases, GIS, etc.), it can do lots of other things.
> - If the answer to the above is no, can R already be extended to include
the
> missing features simply by extra packages
yes.
or does it need some rational
[???]> changes to support these features?
no.
You should think about why you want to extend R in these
ways. If you already have access to Mathematica/MATLAB and
are happy with their capabilities, you should just use them.
Perhaps you can't afford them; are there other free/open
tools that do what you want? If so, you should think about
using them, or perhaps writing interfaces between them and
R.
cheers
Ben Bolker