[R] A "rude" question

[michael watson (IAH-C)]

Hi

I don't know if you are asking the question for the same reasons I did,
but recently (and ongoing) we have been required to adopt an
internationally recognised standard.  Being in the bioinformatics field,
where open-source software is the beating heart of cutting edge
research, we have obviously had to ask ourselves that exact question -
"How can we be sure the software we use works?".  

In science, this doesn't just apply to software though.  When someone
publishes a paper, how can any of us be sure they did what they said
they did?  Or that their methods are the correct ones to use?  Luckily,
there is a two word answer that we hope will satisfy our auditors, and
that is "Peer Review".  In the context of R, I would say that you could
put a confidence measure on any package based on the number of people
who use it; the more people who use a package, the more likely they are
to find and remove bugs.  

I won't get into the "open source" vs "commercial" argument, but put
simply, all software has bugs at some stage, no matter who has written
it.  Given that fact, I prefer the code to be open so I can see them,
not closed so that I can't.  The fact that we can see all code relating
to R is surely the biggest quality measure of all?

Cheers
Mick

-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of msck9 at mizzou.edu
Sent: 27 January 2005 05:10
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] A "rude" question


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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