[R] Comparison between R and MATLAB

[Wacek Kusnierczyk]

for many tasks, gnu octave (a 'matlab clone', no offense to gnu folks
intended) is quite sufficient, and *free* (+ open source).  you can run
some of matlab code in octave.

you should also check if sage (http://www.sagemath.org/) can do the job
for you, it's stuffed with all sorts of maths utilities, with friendly
python frontend, etc.
and once you're at python's, check numpy, scipy, and matplotlib, which
do lots of good work too.  all open source, of course.

vQ


Clint Bowman wrote:
> The easy way around that is to create an account, "Mathworks", with a
> common group that all who will use MatLab belong, then su - Mathworks
> should satisfy the license manager.
>
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> On Fri, 20 Jun 2008, Earl F. Glynn wrote:
>
>   
>> "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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>> 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 r-project.org mailing list
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>   


-- 
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Wacek Kusnierczyk, MD PhD

Email: waku at idi.ntnu.no
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