[R] Do you use R for data manipulation?

[Simon Pickett]

My institute uses SAS religiously, I am the only R "heathen".

I have resisted learning to use SAS because I dont see the point after years 
of using R and I like being able to do everything using one program. 
However, my colleagues maintain that SAS is "better" for programming without 
really ever giving me a good reason why other than memory issues.

dont want to hi-jack the thread but would be interested in hearing some 
other views, especially since my organisation spends (wastes?) alot of money 
every year on SAS licences...

Simon.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Laura Arsanto" <ghina84 at hotmail.it>
To: <jrkrideau at yahoo.ca>; <r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch>; <fjbuch at gmail.com>
Cc: <ross.lazarus at gmail.com>; <gregory_warnes at urmc.rochester.edu>; 
<greg at warnes.net>
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 2:53 PM
Subject: Re: [R] Do you use R for data manipulation?




I used R for my master thesis (with big effort, anyway) and now I find 
difficult to use R in my daily work, becasue it has really serious problems 
with datasets of big dimension, both in the data manipulation step and in 
the analysis step.

But I really would love to use it, as I like its transparence, compared to 
other software.

Laura

***********

> Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 06:42:45 -0700
> From: jrkrideau at yahoo.ca
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch; fjbuch at gmail.com
> CC: ross.lazarus at gmail.com; gregory_warnes at urmc.rochester.edu; 
> greg at warnes.net
> Subject: Re: [R] Do you use R for data manipulation?
>
>
>
>
> --- On Wed, 5/6/09, Farrel Buchinsky <fjbuch at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Is R an appropriate tool for data
> > manipulation and data reshaping and data
> > organizing? I think so but someone who recently joined our
> > group thinks not.
>
> I only do small scale projects and am by no means a programmer. Isn't Perl 
> something for earings?
>
> That said, I find R to be extremely useful at data manipulation and have 
> used it exclusively in my last three projects.  The different data 
> structures alone are worth their weight in gold, if for nothing else than 
> making it harder to make stupid mistakes in coding.
>
> > The new recruit believes that python or another language is
> > a far better tool for developing data manipulation scripts that can be
> > then used by> several members of our research group. Her assessment is
> > that R is useful> only when it comes to data analysis and working with
> > statistical models.
>
> Any reason that she thinks this?  How well does she know R?  It is not 
> exactly a language that one picks up in a week, especially if one is 
> coming from using a stats package like SAS or SPSS. As an ex-SAS and 
> SYSTAT user it took me weeks to just get comfortable with the power of 
> subscripting and the ability to do all kinds of calculations "in-line".
>
> > So what do you think:
> > 1)R is a phenomenally powerful and flexible tool and since you are going 
> >  > to do analyses in R you might as well use it to read data in and merge
> > it and reshape it to whatever you need.
>
> Definately. I am not a computer scientist or a statistician. I usually am 
> working as a single contractor and normally with small datasets as part of 
> a larger project.  R does what I want, usually very elegantly (albeit 
> perhaps after a lot of headbanging and calls for help to the R-list) and 
> it would be stupid for me to use more than one language when it is not 
> needed.
>
> Another plus is that I can  easily leave my data analysis work and a 
> working copy of R with the client.  He/she may have a problem seeing what 
> I did but it is clearly readable & replicable by either the client or 
> another consultant.
>
> > OR
> > 2) Are you crazy? Nobody in their right mind uses R to pipe
> > the data around their lab and assemble it for analysis.
>
> Well I don't work in a lab but why complicate things? If everyone is using 
> the same tools then you have a good situation.  Others who do work in labs 
> can address this point more cogently
>
> >From a personnel point of view do you expect everyone in the lab to be 
> >proficient with R and, for example, Perl? What happens when/if you lose 
> >your Perl expert(s)?  I've had occasions where I waited a week for data 
> >simply because the division's MS Access "expert" was on holiday and the 
> >only other "Access" person there only knew how to enter data and run the 
> >monthly reports.  Anything more complicated required the "expert".
>
>
>
>
>
>       __________________________________________________________________
> Make your browsing faster, safer, and easier with the new Internet 
> Explorer® 8. Optimized for Yahoo! Get it Now for Free! at 
> http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.

_________________________________________________________________
[[elided Hotmail spam]]

[[alternative HTML version deleted]]




--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>