Hi all, I've become quite enamored of R lately, and have decided to try to teach some of its basics (reading in data, manipulation and classical stats analyses) to my fellow grad students at the University of Toronto. I sent out a mass email and have already received some positive responses. One student, however, wanted to know what differentiates the routines that R uses, from those that MATLAB and SPSS use. In other words, in what respects do R routines work faster/more efficiently/more accurately than those of MATLAB/SPSS. I thank you in advance for any answer you can give me (or rather, the inquiring student). Cheers, Matthew Dubins
I would stress the advantages of the free and open source nature of R over the proprietary programs you mention. Because R is free (as in beer), your student will have access to it even when they are free of the university that I presume buys a MATLAB/SPSS license for them. And because R is open source, when your student has an idea regarding how to make R work faster/more efficiently/more accurately, they can modify the source code at whatever level they like. They can also examine at whatever level they like what R is doing, so there are no black boxes involved. On Tue, 2 Oct 2007, Matthew Dubins wrote:> Hi all, > > I've become quite enamored of R lately, and have decided to try to teach > some of its basics (reading in data, manipulation and classical stats > analyses) to my fellow grad students at the University of Toronto. I > sent out a mass email and have already received some positive > responses. One student, however, wanted to know what differentiates the > routines that R uses, from those that MATLAB and SPSS use. In other > words, in what respects do R routines work faster/more efficiently/more > accurately than those of MATLAB/SPSS. > > I thank you in advance for any answer you can give me (or rather, the > inquiring student). > > Cheers, > Matthew Dubins > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. >
On Tuesday 02 October 2007 22:54:48 Matthew Dubins wrote: MD > in what respects do R routines work faster/more efficiently/more MD > accurately than those of MATLAB/SPSS. There has been a benchmark: http://www.sciviews.org/benchmark/index.html but thats quite old old, it would be interesting to see a new comparison between Matlab and R. As you see Matlab and R are equally fast. SPSS however is something completely different, I expect it to be much slower. cheers
I don't think it is so much that the R routines work faster/more efficiently/more accurately but that the user works faster/more efficiently/ more accurately. Patrick Burns patrick at burns-stat.com +44 (0)20 8525 0696 http://www.burns-stat.com (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User") Matthew Dubins wrote:>Hi all, > >I've become quite enamored of R lately, and have decided to try to teach >some of its basics (reading in data, manipulation and classical stats >analyses) to my fellow grad students at the University of Toronto. I >sent out a mass email and have already received some positive >responses. One student, however, wanted to know what differentiates the >routines that R uses, from those that MATLAB and SPSS use. In other >words, in what respects do R routines work faster/more efficiently/more >accurately than those of MATLAB/SPSS. > >I thank you in advance for any answer you can give me (or rather, the >inquiring student). > >Cheers, >Matthew Dubins > >______________________________________________ >R-help at r-project.org mailing list >https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help >PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html >and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > > > >
Some major differences between R and SPSS: 1/ The learning curve of R is steep and the one of SPSS is largely flat. A difference any student will rapidly understand. 2/ The user interface in R is underdeveloped, in comparison to SPSS. 3/ In R without loving to spend time in programming you get nothing. With SPSS your students will concentrate on content, not on technology. 4/ SPSS is so easy to use that the statistical conditions for using specific procedures get easily forgotten. R is more close to the programming side so no way to forget the foundations. 5/ The economic price of SPSS is really steep, you pay more than 30 years of development. R is free, but the real price for a student is his or her time to learn, which can also be steep. I think, how to evaluate the differences is in part a question of the mindset and the work environment of the future user. If your students are more mathematicians, program developers, engineers, science people, etc. and need to tweak a procedure to single case applications you will have an easy public with R. If they are more of economic, social sciences, service industry people, and routine applications or large data sets will be their job SPSS, SAS, SPAD are more adapted. But this may be ground for discussion. BTW: Contrary to some ideas both R & SPSS can be programmed and the algorithms for both have been published. So, no matter whether open source or private property you know what you do (if you want). Hope this helps, F. Thomas Matthew Dubins wrote:> Hi all, > > I've become quite enamored of R lately, and have decided to try to teach > some of its basics (reading in data, manipulation and classical stats > analyses) to my fellow grad students at the University of Toronto. I > sent out a mass email and have already received some positive > responses. One student, however, wanted to know what differentiates the > routines that R uses, from those that MATLAB and SPSS use. In other > words, in what respects do R routines work faster/more efficiently/more > accurately than those of MATLAB/SPSS. > > I thank you in advance for any answer you can give me (or rather, the > inquiring student). > > Cheers, > Matthew Dubins > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reroducible code. > > >-- .......................................... Dr. Frank Thomas FTR Internet Research 93110 Rosny-sous-Bois France