[R] things that are difficult/impossible to do in SAS or SPSS but simple in R

[Roland Rau]

Hi Matthew,

something else came to my mind:
why don't you post something similar to the newsgroups:
comp.soft-sys.stat.spss
comp.soft-sys.sas

R-help is obviously biased and maybe there are things "we" (the R 
community) are just missing. Maybe there are things possible in SPSS or 
SAS which R people are not aware of?

I would be really curious what SPSS or SAS users could give as an 
argument why they prefer their software.

All the best,
Roland


Matthew Keller wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm giving a talk in a few days to a group of psychology faculty and
> grad students re the R statistical language. Most people in my dept.
> use SAS or SPSS. It occurred to me that it would be nice to have a few
> concrete examples of things that are fairly straightforward to do in R
> but that are difficult or impossible to do in SAS or SPSS. However, it
> has been so long since I have used either of those commercial products
> that I am drawing a blank. I've searched the forums and web for a list
> and came up with just Bob Muenchen's comparison of general procedures
> and Patrick Burns' overview of the three. Neither of these give
> concrete examples of statistical problems that are easily solved in R
> but not the commercial packages.
> 
> Can anyone more familiar with SAS or SPSS think of some examples of
> problems that they couldn't do in one of those packages but that could
> be done easily in R? Similarly, if there are any examples of the
> converse I would also be interested to know.
> 
> Best,
> 
> Matt
>