[R] Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...

[Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)]

Interesting! I had no idea there were R-help lists in other languages. I don't see it on http://www.r-project.org/mail.html, but then that's in English! Is there a list of such sites?

Thanks,
Bob

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Kjetil Halvorsen [mailto:kjetilbrinchmannhalvorsen at gmail.com]
>Sent: Monday, June 21, 2010 9:12 AM
>To: Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)
>Cc: ted.harding at manchester.ac.uk; r-help at r-project.org
>Subject: Re: [R] Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...
>
>One should also take into account the other R list. For example, as of
>today the number of subscribers to
>R-help-es (R-help for spanish speakers) is 290, increasing.
>
>Kjetil Halvorsen
>
>On Sun, Jun 20, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)
><muenchen at utk.edu> wrote:
>>
>>
>>>-----Original Message-----
>>>From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org
>> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
>>>On Behalf Of Ted Harding
>>>Sent: Sunday, June 20, 2010 3:42 PM
>>>To: r-help at r-project.org
>>>Subject: Re: [R] Popularity of R, SAS, SPSS, Stata...
>>>
>>>
>>>I've given thought in the past to the question of estimating the R
>>>user base, and came to the conclusion that it is impossible to get
>>>an estimate of the number of users that one could trust (or even
>>>put anything like a margin of error to).
>>>
>>>I think one could get a number which represented a moderately
>>>informative lower bound -- just count the number of different email
>>>addresses that have ever posted to the R-help list. This will of
>>>course include people who post (or have posted) from more than one
>>>email address, and people who tried R for a while and then dropped
>>>it, but my feeling is that these are likely to be outweighed by the
>>>number of people who have used R but have never posted (for example
>>>students who are getting their R help from their instructors, people
>>>using R in a corporate context who are discouraged from posting to
>>>public lists, etc.).
>>
>> Ted, that's a very interesting suggestion. Do you know of a practical
>> way of getting that count?
>>
>>>
>>>The number of subscribers to R-help (currently about 10200) is
>>>a definite lower bound for the number of R users, but many users
>>>post to R-help without being subscribed.
>>
>> 10,200 is quite an amazing number! Here are the number of subscribers
>> to:
>>
>> SAS-L    3,251
>> SPSSX-L  2,103
>> Statlist 1,847
>> S-PLUS - havn't figured out how to get this yet
>>
>> How did you get the R-help figure?
>>
>>>
>>>I would expect that the total number of different email addresses
>>>that have posted to R-help would be considerably larger than 10200.
>>>
>>>I don't think a "Mark-Recapture" approach is feasible.
>>>
>>>Further, I don't know how one might take account of the fact that
>>>some installations of R (e.g. on a corporate or institutional
>>>or departmental server) may each be used by several users.
>>
>> The server question in particular intrigues me. Research organizations
>> are stuffed with high performance clusters. The cost of all the
>> commercial packages is just incredible. Even at the heavily discounted
>> rate academia gets, they're still unaffordable. However, if queried
>we'd
>> find the commercial packages on them, but limited to 4 out of 2,500
>> nodes! You might see the reverse in industry, with one mainframe copy
>of
>> SAS serving hundreds of users.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Bob
>>
>>>
>>>Ted.
>>>
>>>--------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
>>>Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
>>>Date: 20-Jun-10                                       Time: 20:41:43
>>>------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
>>>
>>>______________________________________________
>>>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.
>>