[R] R in Industry

Thu Feb 8 20:15:10 CET 2007

Ben Fairbank wrote:
> To those following this thRead:
> 
> There was a thread on this topic a year or so ago on this list, in which
> contributors mentioned reasons that corporate powers-that-be were
> reluctant to commit to R as a corporate statistical platform.  (My
> favorite was "There is no one to sue if something goes wrong.")
> 
> One reason that I do not think was discussed then, nor have I seen
> discussed since, is the issue of the continuity of support.  If one
> person has contributed disproportionately heavily to the development and
> maintenance of a package, and then retires or follows other interests,
> and the package needs maintenance (perhaps as a consequence of new
> operating systems or a new version of R), is there any assurance that it
> will be available?  With a commercial package such as, say, SPSS, the
> corporate memory and continuance makes such continued maintenance
> likely, but is there such a commitment with R packages?  If my company
> came to depend heavily on a fairly obscure R package (as we are
> contemplating doing), what guarantee is there that it will be available
> next month/year/decade?  I know of none, nor would I expect one.
> 
I would add that if you find a package that performs for your company, 
you have done a couple of things.  One reviewed and benchmarked the 
packages results against others or at least makes sure it passes a 
reasonable economic test.  If this is not done, one is assuming the 
BLACK BOX is always correct.  A sin for many quants.

Over time the requirements of the company will change so some 
modifications will be requested from the lead developer or performed in 
house.  This will lead to a level of expertise in the package that new 
developers or maintainers can keep the continuity of the package going 
long after the lead developer retires.  Especially if the company is 
willing to allocate some resources to this endeavor in leiu of license fees.

For example, recently several of us needed the package RMYsql recompiled 
for windows xp.  We went through the mailing list items related to 
RmySQL for windows, built the binary zip file, and have posted it in 
several places.  We needed the package functionality and took care of 
the problem.  Total time was about 1 day for initial discovery and 
research and now about 30 minutes for upgrading the RmySQL for windows 
after a new version for linux is released.

> As R says when it starts up, "R is free software and comes with
> ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY."
> 
> Ben Fairbank
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Patrick Burns
> Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 10:24 AM
> To: Albrecht,Dr. Stefan (AZ Private Equity Partner)
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] R in Industry
> 
>  From what I know Matlab is much more popular in
> fixed income than R, but R is vastly more popular in
> equities.  R seems to be making quite a lot of headway
> in finance, even in fixed income to some degree.
> 
> At least to some extent, this is probably logical behavior --
> fixed income is more mathematical, and equities is more
> statistical.
> 
> Matlab is easier to learn mainly because it has much simpler
> data structures.  However, once you are doing something
> where a complex data structure is natural, then R is going to
> be easier to use and you are likely to have a more complete
> implementation of what you want.
> 
> If speed becomes a limiting factor, then moving the heavy
> computing to C is a natural thing to do, and very easy with R.
> 
> Patrick Burns
> patrick at burns-stat.com
> +44 (0)20 8525 0696
> http://www.burns-stat.com
> (home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")
> 
> Albrecht, Dr. Stefan (AZ Private Equity Partner) wrote:
> 
>> Dear all,
>>
>> I was reading with great interest your comments about the use of R in
>> the industry. Personally, I use R as scripting language in the
> financial
>> industry, not so much for its statistical capabilities (which are
>> great), but more for programming. I once switched from S-Plus to R,
>> because I liked R more, it had a better and easier to use documentation
>> and it is faster (especially with loops).
>>
>> Now some colleagues of mine are (finally) eager to join me in my
>> quantitative efforts, but they feel that they are more at ease with
>> Matlab. I can understand this. Matlab has a real IDE with symbolic
>> debugger, integrated editor and profiling, etc. The help files are
>> great, very comprehensive and coherent. It also could be easier to
>> learn.
>>
>> And, I was very astonished to realise, Matlab is very, very much faster
>> with simple "for" loops, which would speed up simulations considerably.
>> So I have trouble to argue for a use of R (which I like) instead of
>> Matlab. The price of Matlab is high, but certainly not prohibitive. R
> is
>> great and free, but maybe less comfortable to use than Matlab.
>>
>> Finally, after all, I have the impression that in many job offerings in
>> the financial industry R is much less often mentioned than Matlab.
>>
>> I would very much appreciate any comments on my above remarks. I know
>> there has been some discussions of R vs. Matlab on R-help, but these
>> could be somewhat out-dated, since both languages are evolving quite
>> quickly.
>>
>> With many thanks and best regards,
>> Stefan Albrecht
>>
>>
>>
>>  [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>>
>>
>>  
>>
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>