Hi Neela, Just my ??2 regarding the R vs. SAS issue. I started to use SAS since my undergraduate studies in 1993, and I am now a migrating to R user, and I hope not to ever go back to SAS. My comments are: - SAS is huge it takes over 1GB of space of my PC while R takes just over 100 MB, this days that may not be an important issue, but I'd consider this in your analysis. - One of the things that bother me the most about SAS was their "system update" protocol, it was a mess (at least last time I tried downloading the updates, like 2 years ago). R has a great community and I love the update.packages() function. - Regarding the large datasets discussion, I've had some experience working with mixed models on large dataset, and both programs end up taking a lot of time or crashing. - The learning curve for a non-stats non-programmer guy was steeper for SAS, but again SAS was my first. However, R still does not come so naturally to me when I am coding, I have to look at my old codes, manuals and google. If I ever end up teaching applied stats I'll teach using R. Sincerely, Jose ... migrating to R ... and one of this days to linux
Jose A. Hernandez Ph.D. Candidate Precision Agriculture Center Department of Soil, Water, and Climate University of Minnesota 1991 Upper Buford Circle St. Paul, MN 55108 Ph. (612) 625-0445, Fax. (612) 625-2208