[R] Do you use R for data manipulation?

Wed May 6 16:14:29 CEST 2009

There is a book on data manipulation using R.

Data manipulation with R.

http://www.springer.com/statistics/computational/book/978-0-387-74730-9

It highlighted how comprehensive the data manipulation capabilities of R can be.

Regards,

CH

On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 10:01 PM, Simon Pickett <simon.pickett at bto.org> wrote:
> 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".
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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-- 
CH Chan
Research Assistant - KWH
http://www.macgrass.com