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Large data sets in R

2 messages · Laura Gross, Brian Ripley

#
As a new user of R, I'm wondering what the maximum matrix size is in R?
I have a large data set consisting of 9000 people and want to be able to
create large matrices involving these. Is R suitable for large data
sets?

Thanks
Laura
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On Mon, 29 Oct 2001, Laura Gross wrote:

            
The answer depends on

1) Your platform
2) The amount of memory you have (especially of RAM)
3) What you want to do with 9000 cases, in particular how much information
you have on them.

As a general guide, I would say 9000 cases was not large for R on a
machine with say 256Mb RAM.  But a cluster analysis needing a
9000*9000 matrix would be too large.