[R] The old question: R vs MATLAB vs Mathematica vs ...

[Ali -]

Hi,

This question seems to be old, however I am asking it from a different point 
of view.

R introduces itself as a 'statistical' language and environment. There are 
many discussions about comparing R to MATLAB or mathematica (or other 
similar software). It seems to me that these other software have a broader 
range of applications. For example, in Mathematica one can solve a partial 
differential equation numberically or do image processing, or, one can 
connect a data acquisition card to MATLAB to acquire data from a measurement 
and analyse the results.

- Does R already provide such facilities?

- Was R design to be merely a statistical tool or was it designed with an 
idea of a general mathematical tool in mind?

- If the answer to the above is no, can R already be extended to include the 
missing features simply by extra packages or does it need some rational 
changes to support these features?

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