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

[Joris Meys]

Hehe,

You do have a point in not calling R a statistical language. It is
indeed far more than that; Yet, I don't agree that statistics is done
by stuffy professors. Wished it was so, but alas, last time I looked
at my paycheck I had to conclude that I might be stuffy, but I'm far
from being paid as a professor...

Cheers
Joris

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 11:34 AM, Patrick Burns
<pburns at pburns.seanet.com> wrote:
> I'll expand my statement slightly.
>
> Yes, Peter, you are the archetypical
> stuffy professor.  The truth hurts.
>
> By any reasonable metric that I've
> thought of my company name is at least
> one-third "statistics", from which a
> common (and I think correct) inference
> would be that I'm not anti-statistics.
>
>
> There are two aspects of why I think
> that R should not be called a statistical
> program: marketing and reality.
>
> Marketing
>
> Identifying with the most dreaded experience
> in university is not so good for "sales".
> (Reducing stuffiness might reduce the root
> problem here.)
>
> Reality
>
> R really is used for more than statistics.
> Almost all of my use of R is outside the
> realm of statistics.  Maybe the field of
> statistics should have claim on a lot of
> that, but as of now that isn't the case.
>
> A Fusion
>
> R's real competition is not SAS or SPSS, but
> Excel.  As Brian has pointed out before,
> the vast majority of statistics is actually
> done in Excel.  Is Excel a statistics program?
> I don't think many people think that -- neither
> statisticians nor non-statisticians.
>
> Pat
>
>
> On 21/06/2010 10:32, Joris Meys wrote:
>>
>> On Mon, Jun 21, 2010 at 11:15 AM, Patrick Burns
>> <pburns at pburns.seanet.com>  wrote:
>>>
>>> (Statistics is what stuffy professors
>>> do, I just look at my data and try to
>>> figure out what it means.)
>>
>> Often those stuffy professors have a reason to do so. When they want
>> an objective view on the data for example, or an objective measure of
>> the significance of a hypothesis. But you're right, who cares about
>> objectiveness these days? It doesn't sell you a paper, does it?
>>
>> Cheers
>> Joris
>>
>>
>
> --
> Patrick Burns
> pburns at pburns.seanet.com
> http://www.burns-stat.com
> (home of 'Some hints for the R beginner'
> and 'The R Inferno')
>



-- 
Joris Meys
Statistical consultant

Ghent University
Faculty of Bioscience Engineering
Department of Applied mathematics, biometrics and process control

tel : +32 9 264 59 87
Joris.Meys at Ugent.be
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