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

[Ben Bolker]

Ali - <saveez <at> hotmail.com> writes:

> 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?

some ...

RSiteSearch("image analysis")
http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02a/archive/69200.html
  
RSiteSearch("PDE") -- suggests not much in the way
of numeric PDE solutions

RSiteSearch("data acquisition") -- suggests not much (but see
http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02a/archive/81317.html )


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

  It was designed as a "language and environment for statistical computing and
graphics".  However, since it provides interfaces to routines written
in other languages (Tcl/Tk, C, Fortran, ...) and other programs
(databases, GIS, etc.), it can do lots of other things.

> - If the answer to the above is no, can R already be extended to include the 
> missing features simply by extra packages 

  yes.

or does it need some rational 
[???]
> changes to support these features?

   no.

   You should think about why you want to extend R in these
ways.  If you already have access to Mathematica/MATLAB and
are happy with their capabilities, you should just use them.
Perhaps you can't afford them; are there other free/open
tools that do what you want?  If so, you should think about
using them, or perhaps writing interfaces between them and
R.

  cheers
    Ben Bolker