[R] Very Large Data Sets

[Bill Venables]

Tony Fagan asks:

> List,

Sir,

> Can R handle very large data sets (say, 100 million records) for data 
> mining applications? 

The question assumes that the data handling capacity is a
property of the software alone, which is nonsense.  It is partly
a property of the software, partly of what you want to do with
the records, but mostly of the system on which it is run.

> My understanding is that Splus can not, but SAS can easily.

Try handling 100 million records with SAS (or anything else) on a
486 and see how easily it does it.

More seriously, the consensus is that on the same modern system
SAS is usually better able to handle large, dumb calculations
than S-PLUS, which is (generally) better than R.  Horses for
courses.

Bill Venables.
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Bill Venables, Statistician, CMIS Environmetrics Project.

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