[R] Comparison between R and MATLAB
Earl F. Glynn
efg at stowers-institute.org
Fri Jun 20 20:05:27 CEST 2008
"Shubha Vishwanath Karanth" <shubhak at ambaresearch.com> wrote in message
news:7D44476A5833D340A0A85099D5EAD8B2832C at BAN-MAILSRV02.Amba.com...
Can I get a comparison between R and MATLAB? How is R efficient than MATLAB?
Or what are the weaknesses of R compared to MATLAB?
Don't forget to compare licenses and cost. Matlab's rigid and unreasonable
license is the main reason I use R now.
Several years ago the Mathworks refused to let a post doc and me share a
MatLab license -- they wanted all single-user licenses to be named users
even if each of us only needed MatLab a few hours a month. I asked if they
had a "math model" for what we got for a license, but they didn't care that
there was a huge disconnect between what they wanted to sell and our usage
needs. I quit using MatLab, converted my project from MatLab to R, and now
steer as many people to R as possible.
The Mathworks refuses to acknowledge that life-science users of math tools
are not like physical science users. Biologists can spend weeks or months
on experiments and then occasionally need high-end math tools for analysis.
A single shared network MatLab license outside of academia is outrageously
expensive. A single network concurrent license for Matlab and the Image
processing, Signal Processing and PDE toolboxes costs $18,800 -- I received
that quote just yesterday since we still have a few people that use existing
MatLab code.
MatLab may be a good product, but the Mathworks is unreasonable in how they
license it. We are a non-profit, basic life scientific research institute
and the Mathworks sells us the same license as for-profit businesses. Only
degree-granting universities are eligible for academic pricing apparently.
efg
Earl F Glynn
Bioinformatics
Stowers Institute for Medical Research
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