[R] A "rude" question

[A.J. Rossini]

How do you know that any results from any software package are
trustable?  I'm not sure that the number of authors has anything to do
with it.

If you are extremely paranoid, you can reprogram everything you do a
few times in a large number of completely different languages written
by different people, and top it off with hand calculations.   Then you
should do this across 4-5 operating systems with different core
libraries.

I'm somewhat joking in the second paragraph, but very serious in the
first.  How and why do YOU trust software?  What criteria fit?

Perhaps a better question would be to ask by what criteria people use
to "trust" software, using R as an illustration.

best,
-tony

p.s. R does satisfy a good part of the second paragraph, at least for
a critical subset of the language.

On Wed, 26 Jan 2005 23:09:51 -0600, msck9 at mizzou.edu <msck9 at mizzou.edu> wrote:
> Dear all,
>  I am beginner using R. I have a question about it. When you use it,
>  since it is written by so many authors, how do you know that the
>  results are trustable?(I don't want to affend anyone, also I trust
>  people). But I think this should be a question.
> 
>  Thanks,
>  Ming
> 
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-- 
best,
-tony

"Commit early,commit often, and commit in a repository from which we can easily
roll-back your mistakes" (AJR, 4Jan05).

A.J. Rossini
blindglobe at gmail.com