[R] R binaries, platform independent and Design of Experiments

[Sean O'Riordain]

On 02/09/05, Nam-Ky Nguyen <nkn at turing.une.edu.au> wrote:
> > b) You do NOT want to do numerical computations on software available in
> > Java byte code.
> You do not want to do heavy numerical computations with R either. Most
> statistical calculation using R requires a fraction of a second and I
> cannot see a real difference between say 0.05 second and 0.07 second. NKN.

It is my understanding that the problem with Java is that it wasn't
written with serious numerical computation in mind - as far as I know
only in the latest version have Sun started to be address this issue. 
The byte code for the java virtual machine has a flawed numerical
model which is not fully compliant with the IEEE754 standard - this
has nothing to do with speed of computation.  Furthermore the integer
model is very restrictive when you want to work on random numbers
using bit-twiddling.

cheers!
Sean