R badly lags matlab on performance?
As for jit and Ra, that was immediate reaction too but I found that jit does not help on your example. But I concur fully with what Ben said --- use the tool that is appropriate for the task at hand. If your task is running for loops, Matlab does it faster and you have Matlab, well then you should by all means use Matlab.
A good chunk of statistical computation involves loops. We are all happy R users. I was surprised to see that we are so far from matlab in the crucial dimension of performance.
Ajay Shah http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah ajayshah at mayin.org http://ajayshahblog.blogspot.com <*(:-? - wizard who doesn't know the answer.