[R] Making a case for using R in Academia

[Marwan Khawaja]

More impressions --

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of 
> Charilaos Skiadas
> Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 11:45 PM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] Making a case for using R in Academia
> 
> John (and everyone else),
> 
> On Nov 9, 2006, at 4:20 PM, John Fox wrote:
> 
> > Dear Charilaos,
> >
> > It's very difficult to give definitive answers to the 
> questions that 
> > you pose because we don't have any good data (at least as far as I
> > know) about
> > how widely R is used.
> 
> Yes it certainly isn't an easy question to answer, and I 
> don't necessarily need complete data. The situation as 
> presented to me by my colleagues in the Social Sciences is 
> really that SPSS is "the standard", so I am basically hoping 
> for evidence to just shake this view (unless it is true, but 
> I have to say I doubt it). I am more hoping for particular 
> examples of cases in the Social Sciences, where SPSS is far 
> from the standard, and the programs and schools you mention 
> below are exactly the sort of thing I was looking for!

I think it is not the standard -- often unheard of -- by the social science
community in large research universities in the States where SAS dominates
(unless you are in the Chicago area). So I agree with John. 
It is perhaps more popular among social scientists in Europe. 

> 
> For now unfortunately we will be sticking with SPSS, despite 
> the considerable cost (which was mainly our problem at the 
> moment, so SAS is not even being considered for that reason), 
> but I am hoping to slowly build enough evidence of the 
> extensive use of R for when all this comes up again. Even 
> just a list of the universities and departments that use it 
> would be very helpful, so any of you who would like to send 
> such information about your departments or other departments 
> you might know about, off the list, it would be extremely 
> helpful to me.
> 
> Perhaps it would be useful for such a list to exist somewhere 
> online?  (I guess you could say "google", but I find it hard 
> to use google to look up such information on R, for the 
> obvious reason of the shortness of the name.
> 
> > [snip]
> >
> > Among social scientists the picture is not as clear. My 
> impression is 
> > that SPSS is used very widely for low-levels methods 
> courses taught to 
> > undergraduates, and not very extensively in the best social-science 
> > graduate programmes. I would expect that, at present, Stata use in 
> > social- science graduate programmes exceeds R, and that SAS and R 
> > would also be used fairly widely. In my opinion, these are the only 
> > reasonable choices -- I don't think that SPSS is 
> sufficiently capable 
> > to compete with R, Stata, or SAS.
> > There are, for example, several different packages used at 
> the ICPSR 
> > Summer Program in Quantitative Methods for Social Research, but 
> > several relatively advanced courses now use R. Likewise, the Oxford 
> > Spring School, hosted by the Department of Politics and 
> International 
> > Relations at Oxford, has mostly employed R and Stata.
> 
> Thanks, I will be looking into those. I basically just need 
> to look at various universities and their social sciences 
> departments, and see what they use there. As other suggested, 
> I will be looking into the number of books and papers in R 
> and how it is increasing every year.
> 
> Once again thank you all for your comments, this has been a 
> very helpful discussion for me, and it's a great pleasure to 
> find such a helpful and friendly mailing list.
> 
> > Of course, my own preference is for R.
> >
> > Regards,
> >  John
> 
> Haris
> 
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--
Marwan Khawaja, Ph.D.
Professor & Director
Center for Research on Population & Health
American University of Beirut
P.O. Box 11-0236, Riad El Solh
Beirut 1107 2020 Lebanon

Email: marwan.khawaja at aub.edu.lb
Url: http://staff.aub.edu.lb/~mk36/
Tel: +961 1 35 00 00 ext. 4668
Fax: +961 1 74 44 70