[R] FDA and ICH Compliance of R

[Gabor Grothendieck]

From: Frank E Harrell Jr <feh3k at spamcop.net>
> per year in SAS licenses and have to hire armies of non-intellectually
> challenged SAS programmers to do the work of significantly fewer
> programmers that use modern statistical computing tools like R and S-Plus,
> it is surprising that SAS is still the most commonly used tool in the
> clinical side of drug development. I quit using SAS in 1991 because my
> productivity jumped at least 20% within one month of using S-Plus.

I have not used SAS for even longer than you but to
give SAS its due:

- its pretty easy to produce all the info you need for a
  complete analysis with a few SAS commands.  It would be
  possible to create analogous R commands but as it stands
  you have to keep going back and forth with R rather than
  just get it all out at once like you can with SAS.

- SAS has more functionality in missing values.  You
  can have different types of SAS missing values but in R you
  can have only one type of missing value.

- the BY phrase in SAS is incredibly powerful and handy.  You
  can get the same effect in R but I think that specific
  functionality is easier with SAS.

Obviously R is incredibly powerful and functional and I really
am out of touch with the SAS world but I thought I would make
whatever case I could.  I am willing to be corrected by those 
more in the know with SAS if this wrong.