[R] The Quality & Accuracy of R

[Peter Dalgaard]

Bob,

Your point is well taken, but it also raises a number of issues 
(post-install testing to name one) for which the R-devel list would be 
more suitable. Could we move the discussion there?

	-Peter


Muenchen, Robert A (Bob) wrote:
> Hi All,
> 
>  
> 
> We have all had to face skeptical colleagues asking if software made by
> volunteers could match the quality and accuracy of commercially written
> software. Thanks to the prompting of a recent R-help thread, I read, "R:
> Regulatory Compliance and Validation Issues, A Guidance Document for the
> Use of R in Regulated Clinical Trial Environments
> (http://www.r-project.org/doc/R-FDA.pdf). This is an important document,
> of interest to the general R community. The question of R's accuracy is
> such a frequent one, it would be beneficial to increase the visibility
> of the non-clinical  information it contains. A document aimed at a
> general audience, entitled something like, "R: Controlling Quality and
> Assuring Accuracy" could be compiled from the these sections:
> 
>  
> 
> 1.      What is R? (section 4)
> 
> 2.      The R Foundation for Statistical Computing (section  3)
> 
> 3.      The Scope of this Guidance Document (section 2)
> 
> 4.      Software Development Life Cycle (section 6)
> 
>  
> 
> Marc Schwartz, Frank Harrell, Anthony Rossini, Ian Francis and others
> did such a great job that very few words would need to change. The only
> addition I suggest is to mention how well R did in, Keeling & Parvur's
> "A comparative study of the reliability to nine statistical software
> packages, May 1, 2007 Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Vol.51,
> pp 3811-3831. 
> 
>  
> 
> Given the importance of this issue, I would like to see such a document
> added to the PDF manuals in R's Help.
> 
>  
> 
> The document mentions (Sect. 6.3) that a set of validation tests, data
> and known results are available. It would be useful to have an option to
> run that test suite in every R installation, providing clear progress,
> "Validating accuracy of t-tests...Validating accuracy of linear
> regression...." Whether or not people chose to run the tests, they would
> at least know that such tests are available. Back in my mainframe
> installation days, this step was part of many software installations and
> it certainly gave the impression that those were the companies that took
> accuracy seriously. Of course the other companies probably just ran
> their validation suite before shipping, but seeing it happen had a
> tremendous impact.  I don't know how much this would add to download,
> but if it was too much, perhaps it could be implemented as a separate
> download. 
> 
>  
> 
> I hope these suggestions can help mitigate the concerns so many non-R
> users have.
> 
>  
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Bob
> 
>  
> 
> =========================================================
> 
> Bob Muenchen (pronounced Min'-chen), 
> 
> Manager, Research Computing Support 
> 
> U of TN Office of Information Technology
> 
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> 
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> 
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> 
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> 
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-- 
    O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
   c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
  (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark      Ph:  (+45) 35327918
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