Another big difference between R and other computing language such as
SPSS/SAS/STATA.
You can easily get a job using SPSS/SAS/STATA. But it is extremely difficult
to find a job using R. ^_^.

On 03 Jan 2006 17:53:40 +0100, Peter Dalgaard <p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk>
wrote:
>
> Patrick Burns <pburns@pburns.seanet.com> writes:
>
> > I have had an email conversation with the author of the
> > technical report from which the quote was taken.  I am
> > formulating a comment to the report that will be posted
> > with the technical report.
> >
> > I would be pleased if this thread continued, so I will know
> > better what I want to say.  Plus I should be able to reference
> > this thread in the comment.
>
> One thing that is often overlooked, and hasn't yet been mentioned in
> the thread, is how much *simpler* R can be for certain completely
> basic tasks of practical or pedagogical relevance: Calculate a simple
> derived statistic, confidence intervals from estimate and SE,
> percentage points of the binomial distribution - using dbinom or from
> the formula, take the sum of each of 10 random samples from a set of
> numbers, etc. This is where other packages get stuck in the
> procedure+dataset mindset.
>
> For much the same reason, those packages make you tend to treat
> practical data analysis as something distinct from theoretical
> understanding of the methods: You just don't use SAS or SPSS or Stata
> to illustrate the concept of a random sample by setting up a small
> simulation study as the first thing you do in a statistics class,
> whereas you could quite conceivably do it in R. (What *is* the
> equivalent of rnorm(25) in those languages, actually?)
>
> Even when using SAS in teaching, I sometimes fire up R just to
> calculate simple things like
>
>   pbar <- (p1+p2)/2
>   sqrt(pbar*(1-pbar))
>
> which you need to cheat SAS Analyst's sample size calculator to work
> with proportions rather than means. SAS leaves you no way to do this
> short of setting up a new data set. The Windows calculator will do it,
> of course, but the students can't see what you are doing then.
>
>
> --
>    O__  ---- Peter Dalgaard             Øster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B
>   c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics     PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K
> (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen   Denmark          Ph:  (+45)
> 35327918
> ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk)                  FAX: (+45)
> 35327907
>
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--
WenSui Liu
(http://statcompute.blogspot.com)
Senior Decision Support Analyst
Health Policy and Clinical Effectiveness
Cincinnati Children Hospital Medical Center

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