[R] Introducing R to statisticians

[Duncan Murdoch]

On 11/11/2009 10:26 AM, Damjan Krstajic wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I will present R language and R software environment to the Statistical Society of Serbia.
> 
> As I will doing it to professional statisticians it seems unneccesary to
> me to present them how R language works in details. I am more
> interested to present them with the latest facts regarding R (approximately number of users, number of add-on packages etc.) and in general why they should start using it.

Number of users:  I don't know any reliable estimates.  If you don't 
want to make something up, just do a Google search, and pick someone 
else's estimate.  For example, this article (recently cited by David 
Smith on his blog)

http://www.information-management.com/blogs/business_intelligence_bi_statistics-10016491-1.html

says "an estimated 2M worldwide users".

Number of add-on packages:  This is easier.  The big repositories are 
CRAN and Bioconductor, with other smaller and private ones not making a 
big difference to the number of packages available.  You can just go to 
those sites and count.

Why should they use it?  That depends on what's wrong with what they're 
using now.  If they (and their clients) are satisfied with what they've 
got, then it's harder to argue that they should switch.  If you know 
their applications you can show how well R does there, but if what 
they've got now is just as good and the price difference doesn't matter 
to them, they won't want to switch.

Duncan Murdoch

> 
> I would be grateful if anyone could point to me a place where I can find the information. Also, any comparisons with other stats packages and languages would be much appreciated. 
> 
> Thanks in advance.
> 
> With kind regards
> DK 		 	   		  
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