[R] popular R packages

Tue Mar 10 22:05:55 CET 2009

sue at xlsolutions-corp.com wrote:
>  Hi Spencer,
> 
>  XLSolutions is currently analyzing r-help archived questions to rank
> packages for the upcoming R-PLUS 3.3 Professional version and we will be
> happy to share the outcome with interested parties. Please email
> dan at xlsolutions-corp.com

I would expect that the correlation between popularity on the one hand 
and usefulness as well as quality to be relatively low.  If it was 
possible to rate the downloaders in respect to "seriousness" and whether 
they actually use the package for some sensible purpose I would be more 
interested.  Consider a highly specialized and good quality package used 
by a relatively small group of distinguished reseachers.  Would that 
have a high rank?  No.  But important?  Possibly yes.

Tom
> 
> 
>  Regards -
>  Sue Turner
>  Senior Account Manager
>  XLSolutions Corporation
>  North American Division
>  1700 7th Ave
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> 
> 
> 
> --- On Sat, 3/7/09, Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com> wrote:
> 
>> From: Spencer Graves <spencer.graves at prodsyse.com>
>> Subject: Re: [R] popular R packages
>> To: "Wacek Kusnierczyk" <Waclaw.Marcin.Kusnierczyk at idi.ntnu.no>
>> Cc: r-help at r-project.org, "Jeroen Ooms" <j.c.l.ooms at uu.nl>, "Thomas Adams" <Thomas.Adams at noaa.gov>
>> Date: Saturday, March 7, 2009, 5:22 PM
>> I just did RSiteSearch("library(xxx)") with xxx =
>> the names of 6 packages familiar to me, with the following
>> numbers of hits: 
>>
>> hits package
>>
>> 169 lme4
>> 165 nlme
>>   6 fda
>>   4 maps
>>   2 FinTS
>>   2 DierckxSpline
>>     
>>      Software could be written to (1) extract the names of
>> current packages from CRAN then (2) perform queries similar
>> to this on all such packages and summarize the results.  I
>> don't have the time now to write code for this, but
>> I've written similar code before for step (1);  it can
>> be found in "scripts/TsayFiles.R" in the
>> "FinTS" package on CRAN.  For step (2), Sundar
>> Dorai-Raj wrote code that is is included in the preliminary
>> "RSiteSearch" package available from R-Forge via
>> install.'packages("RSiteSearch",repos="http://r-forge.r-project.org")'.
>>
>>      Code to do this could probably be written (a) in a
>> matter of seconds by many of those in the R Core team or (b)
>> in a matter of hours by virtually any reader of this list
>> using the examples I just cited.  And it could provide
>> numbers without a need to convince others to keep download
>> statistics and make them available later. 
>>      Hope this helps.      Spencer Graves    
>> Wacek Kusnierczyk wrote:
>>> i have kept r installed on more than ten computers
>> during the past few
>>> years, some of them running win + more than one linux
>> distro, all of
>>> them having r, most often installed from a separate
>> download.
>>> i know of many cases where students download r for the
>> purpose of a
>>> course in statistics -- often an introductory course
>> for students who
>>> otherwise have little to do with stats. some of them
>> do it more than
>>> once during the semester, and many of them never use r
>> again.
>>> taking into account that basic statistics courses are
>> taught to most
>>> university students and that r is surely the most
>> popular free
>>> statistical computing environment, download-based
>> usage estimates may be
>>> a bit optimistic, unless 'usage' is taken to
>> include 'learn-pass-forget'.
>>> vQ
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Tal Galili wrote:
>>>   
>>>> I agree with Thomas, over the years I have
>> installed R on at least 5
>>>> computers.
>>>>
>>>> BTW: does any one knows how the website statistics
>> of r-project are
>>>> being analyzed?
>>>> Since I can't see any "google
>> analytics" or other tracking code in the main
>>>> website, I am guessing someone might be running
>> some log-file analyzer - but
>>>> I'd rather hear that then assume.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, Mar 8, 2009 at 12:45 AM, Thomas Adams
>> <Thomas.Adams at noaa.gov> wrote:
>>>>       
>>>>> I don't think "At least one of the
>> participants in the 2004 thread
>>>>> suggested that it would be a "good
>> thing" to track the numbers of downloads
>>>>> by package." is reasonable because I
>> download R packages for 2 home
>>>>> computers (laptop & desktop) and 2 at work
>> (1 Linux & 1 Mac). There must be
>>>>> many such casesâ€¦
>>>>>
>>>>> Tom
>>>>>
>>>>>       
>>> ______________________________________________
>>> R-help at r-project.org 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 r-project.org 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 r-project.org 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.

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