Do you use R for data manipulation?
Farrel Buchinsky wrote:
Is R an appropriate tool for data manipulation and data reshaping and data organizing? I think so but someone who recently joined our group thinks not. The new recruit believes that python or another language is a far better tool for developing data manipulation scripts that can be then used by several members of our research group. Her assessment is that R is useful only when it comes to data analysis and working with statistical models.
If the project data is complex and heterogeneous I use SQL database for manipulating data. Ideally, your data should be entered into the database at the point of creation - if not then you are bound to be using python, perl, java, bash etc programs to input the stuff. Postgres=SQL these days is a very good choice, there are even generators available for automatic generation of web forms for data entry and viewing for those who have to use the web or cant be bothered with SQL. But once data is in SQL database, it is immenesely more usable and manipulatable in a natural way (what they used to call data-centric way). From R, it trivial to get it into a dataframe with auto generation of column names. Regards, Kostas Savvidis Nanjing University PS: perl, python, and so on are definitely not to be pushed onto everybody by the "expert" in the lab. But perhaps SQL is, especially if you would like the web interface to your data. ----------------------------------------------- Histion Partners LP and Nanjing University tel: +8625 8622 8040 (h) +86 13451 911 944 (m)