[R] R in Industry

Doran, Harold HDoran at air.org
Thu Feb 8 22:43:53 CET 2007 

It's been an interseting game of "telephone". Actually, the thread
started with a recommendation to have a place on CRAN for prospective
employers to place job adverts that require R as a skill.

I think the sig is a good idea. But, I think it would be much easier to
have something akin to what Python has on their web site. I should
clarify that I *do not* think this would be an additional responsibility
of the CRAN maintainer(s). But, that prospective employers can populate
this portion of the site on their own. Then, maybe that advert would
expire and disappear from the web site at that time or when it is
removed by the person that created it.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of AA
> Sent: Thursday, February 08, 2007 4:23 PM
> To: Duncan Murdoch
> Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch; Ben Fairbank
> Subject: Re: [R] R in Industry
> 
> I think we began this thread by comparing Matlab to R. In 
> Matlab one has access to the source code except for some 
> internal functions (There are not that many). The same thing 
> is valid for Splus. The choice of the programming language, 
> beside personal preference has a lot to do with the quality 
> and the number of people using it in the  community. In my 
> own experience Matlab is very good in signal processing while 
> R is good in statistics and both benefit from a solid user's 
> community. What I found though is that the documentation in 
> Matlab is much more user-freindly and practical than R. And 
> that is important in industry.
> 
> Ansel.
> 
> On 2/8/07, Duncan Murdoch <murdoch at stats.uwo.ca> wrote:
> >
> > On 2/8/2007 12:48 PM, 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.
> >
> > There's no guarantee of support, but the majority of R packages are 
> > licensed under the GPL, so there is a guarantee of 
> availability of the 
> > source code, which means that contracting with someone 
> expert in the 
> > field to provide you with support will be a possibility.  
> If it's an 
> > obscure package as you say, your company may represent a 
> majority of 
> > users, and it may well be that the expert you need is 
> already someone 
> > in your company, who contributed patches to the package while the 
> > original maintainer was still active.
> >
> > If a commercial vendor were to withdraw support for a 
> package there is 
> > really no hope of putting together your own support service.  You 
> > would have to live with the bugs and without updates, or start from 
> > scratch to replace it yourself.  For example, this happened to me 
> > about 10 years ago when Intel withdrew support for 3DR.  As 
> it happens 
> > OpenGL is a better replacement, but I wasn't too happy at the time.
> >
> > Duncan Murdoch
> >
> > >
> > > 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.
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > 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.
> >
> 
> 	[[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.
>

More information about the R-help mailing list