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

[Kjetil Halvorsen]

On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 8:57 AM, Muenchen, Robert A (Bob)
<muenchen at utk.edu> wrote:
> 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?

It is listed here:
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo

Kjetil

>
> 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.
>>>
>