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Who uses R?

17 messages · Eleni Rapsomaniki, Gesmann, Markus, Gustaf Rydevik +11 more

#
Dear R users,

I have started work in a Statistics government department and I am trying to
convince my bosses to install R on our computers (I can't do proper stats in
Excel!!). They asked me to prove that this is a widely used software (and not
just another free-source, bug infected toy I found on the web!) by suggesting
other big organisations that use it. Are you aware of any reputable places
(academic or not) that use R? (e.g. maybe you work for them)

I would be really grateful for any advice on this. Also suggestions on arguments
I could use to persuade them that R is so much better than Excel would be very
much appreciated.

Many Thanks
Eleni Rapsomaniki
#
Dear Eleni,

Maybe the participants of the useR conferences are a good start, see
e.g.
http://www.r-project.org/useR-2006/participants.html

Kind regards,

Markus Gesmann 
FPMA
Lloyd's Market Analysis
Lloyd's * One Lime Street * London * EC3M 7HA
Telephone +44 (0)20 7327 6472
Fax       +44 (0)20 7327 5718
http://www.lloyds.com

SAVE PAPER - THINK BEFORE YOU PRINT




-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
On Behalf Of Eleni Rapsomaniki
Sent: 25 September 2007 11:46
To: r-help at r-project.org
Subject: [R] Who uses R?


Dear R users,

I have started work in a Statistics government department and I am
trying to
convince my bosses to install R on our computers (I can't do proper
stats in
Excel!!). They asked me to prove that this is a widely used software
(and not
just another free-source, bug infected toy I found on the web!) by
suggesting
other big organisations that use it. Are you aware of any reputable
places
(academic or not) that use R? (e.g. maybe you work for them)

I would be really grateful for any advice on this. Also suggestions on
arguments
I could use to persuade them that R is so much better than Excel would
be very
much appreciated.

Many Thanks
Eleni Rapsomaniki

______________________________________________
R-help at r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
**********************************************************************
The information in this E-Mail and in any attachments is CON...{{dropped}}
#
On 9/25/07, Eleni Rapsomaniki <e.rapsomaniki at mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk> wrote:
The statistics section of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease
Control, where I work, use R about 70% of the time.
The MEB (medical epidemiology and biostatistics) department at
Karolinska Institutet, the nordic countries premiere medical
university, are also heavy R-users.

Best,

Gustaf
#
See the "Members and Donors" section on the left-hand side of the R web
site.

Cheers,

Simon.

Note to self: Become a supporting member.
On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 11:59 +0100, Gesmann, Markus wrote:
#
Just speaking of the field I'm most familiar with, there
are now users of R in many of the largest financial
companies in the world.

http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html

is one place to look for arguments against Excel.
This was just updated to include an amusing numerical
bug in Excel 2007. Guess what 850 * 77.1 equals.


Patrick Burns
patrick at burns-stat.com
+44 (0)20 8525 0696
http://www.burns-stat.com
(home of S Poetry and "A Guide for the Unwilling S User")
Eleni Rapsomaniki wrote:

            
#
That's a good answer, but the usage is very much wider.

As Pat Burns has just replied while I was composing this, many (maybe 
most) major financial institutions use R, although they may not want that 
to be taken as an endorsement.  Similarly for pharmaceuticals.

I would have thought a very convincing argument would be to point out all 
the books which have been published that are about or depend on R.

Eleni's email address is the UK, so perhaps the 'Statistics government 
department' is.  I hope not (as they should not need convincing), but
'University of Oxford' should suffice ....
On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, Simon Blomberg wrote:

            

  
    
#
You could provide examples of errors, which Excel gives in computations, in
comparison to R.
Excel could not calculate inverse matrix for my task, so I was to find
something better, and I've found R (it was version 1.2, as far as I
remember).

My another problem was scripting (R is more convenient, but harder to
learn).

You can also notice the publication quality graphics.
e.rapsomaniki wrote:

  
    
#
On 25-Sep-07 10:46:17, Eleni Rapsomaniki wrote:
Dear Eleni,

You deserve all the support we can give you!

As well as the many other cogent suggestions you will get
(and I hope there will be plenty of citations of articles
published in prestigious journals), the following may also
be helpful:

Pat Altham (now retired) developed extensive teaching (and
other) materials in R at the Cambridge University Statistical
Laboratory. From her personal web page:

  "Some of the computer languages I have had to try to
   learn since graduating in 1964: Cambridge autocode,
   algol, phoenix, machine-code, Fortran, BBC-Basic,
   GLIM, GENSTAT, Linux, S-Plus and finally (probably
   the best so far!) R."

See http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/~pat/ for more details
and for links to her R material.

Good luck!
Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 25-Sep-07                                       Time: 12:40:36
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
#
On 25-Sep-07 11:11:44, Patrick Burns wrote:
What a nasty little puzzle to set, Patrick! I had to turn
to OpenOffice Calc, which told me that the answer is 65535.
Is that right, Patrick? Should I check it on Excel?

Best wishes,
Ted.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 25-Sep-07                                       Time: 12:45:11
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
#
Eleni,

FWIW, there are a number of us in the U.S. NOAA/National Weather Service 
and at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) (who wrote 
the 'Verification' package) who use R for verification of meteorological 
and hydrologic forecasts, aiding in the calibration of distributed 
hydrologic models, and in the analysis of radar estimated precipitation 
biases, and more?

Regards,
Tom
Eleni Rapsomaniki wrote:

  
    
#
--- Eleni Rapsomaniki
<e.rapsomaniki at mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk> wrote:

            
Here are some of the arguments for not using Excel (& 
other spread sheets) for statistical analysis.

Problems With Using Microsoft Excel for Statistics
 Microsoft Excel for Statistics
http://www.cs.uiowa.edu/~jcryer/JSMTalk2001.pdf

Spread sheet addiction
http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html
Using Excel for survey analysis ( by J. Cryer)
http://www.audiencedialogue.org/excel1.html
Is Microsoft Excel an Adequate Statistics Package?
http://www.practicalstats.com/Pages/excelstats.html

Use of Excel for Statistical Analysis
http://www.agresearch.co.nz/Science/Statistics/exceluse1.htm

Should Microsoft Excel Software Be Used For
Statistical Analysis Or Graphics? ( J. Cryer)
http://gcrc.ucsd.edu/biostatistics/Excel.pdf

Statistical analysis using Microsoft Excel
http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~jsimonof/classes/1305/pdf/excelreg.pdf

Statistical flaws in Excel
http://www.mis.coventry.ac.uk/~nhunt/pottel.pdf

NOTE X: USE OF EXCEL IN STATISTICS COURSES AND
LABORATORIES - SOME PROS AND CONS
http://www.daheiser.info/excel/notes/notex.pdf

Using Excel for Statistics :Tips and Warnings
http://www.reading.ac.uk/ssc/publications/guides/xfs.pdf

Doing statistics with a speadsheet -Perhaps not a good
idea? (J. Kane)
http://groups.google.ca/group/sci.stat.edu/browse_thread/thread/b2e6def39c6b8ef4/1f6bbe4e398a1e0d?q=John+Kane+Excel&rnum=1#1f6bbe4e398a1e0d
#
On 9/25/2007 7:45 AM, (Ted Harding) wrote:
Since Excel is the government approved gold standard, you should.  OO 
Calc got it wrong.  The correct Excel answer is 100000.  (Only in 2007; 
Office 97 and 2003 had the same bug as OO Calc, and give 65535.)

Duncan Murdoch
#
On 25-Sep-07 12:34:47, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
Thanks, Duncan! It's good to be sure! Sadly, this has shaken
my faith in R. But now I know where to turn.
Best wishes,
Ted.



--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at manchester.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 25-Sep-07                                       Time: 13:51:00
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------
#
Hi, although this is a guess, I would dare to say that it is probably used
in at least some schools/departments of any research university. Yet,
universities/schools often have a plethora  
of statistical softwares available (in our school, for instance, SAS, Stata,
SPSS, S-Plus) so it is not THE only statistical software. But R is one of
them and especially the guys at the forefront of statistical modeling are
using it because of its flexibility in programming.

Cheers,
Daniel

University of Maryland

-------------------------
cuncta stricte discussurus
-------------------------

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] Im
Auftrag von Gustaf Rydevik
Gesendet: Tuesday, September 25, 2007 7:02 AM
An: Eleni Rapsomaniki
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Betreff: Re: [R] Who uses R?
On 9/25/07, Eleni Rapsomaniki <e.rapsomaniki at mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk> wrote:
The statistics section of the Swedish Institute for Infectious Disease
Control, where I work, use R about 70% of the time.
The MEB (medical epidemiology and biostatistics) department at Karolinska
Institutet, the nordic countries premiere medical university, are also heavy
R-users.

Best,

Gustaf

--
Gustaf Rydevik, M.Sci.
tel: +46(0)703 051 451
address:Essingetorget 40,112 66 Stockholm, SE skype:gustaf_rydevik

______________________________________________
R-help at r-project.org mailing list
https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
#
(Ted Harding) wrote:

            
Sadly I'm deprived of Excel 2007 myself, but apparently
this discussion so far doesn't fully acknowledge Excel's
innovation in quantum computing. It seems that both 100,000
and 65,535 are possible answers, which one you get depends
on which slit is open at the moment.

Pat
#
(Ted Harding) wrote:

            
Well, calling Linux a computer language will probably not add too much
credibility to the quote(r). :-)
#
As has been pointed out on the net its a display problem
and Excel's internal value is correct.  We can check this
by creating an Excel 2007 spreadsheet with
A1 = A2-1  gives 65534
A2 =850 * 77.1 gives 100000
A3 = A2+1 gives 100001
A4 = A2+2 gives 65537

and then running this code from R on the spreadsheet
to examine the internal values that Excel has stored:

library(RDCOMClient)
xls <- COMCreate("Excel.Application")
xls[["Workbooks"]]$Open("C:\\tmp2\\badcalc.xlsx")
rng <- xls[["ActiveSheet"]]$Range("A1:A4")
x <- rng[["Value"]]
x

When I run that I get this showing the internal
values are correct:
An object of class "COMIDispatch"
Slot "ref":
<pointer: 0x001e7b94>
[[1]]
[[1]][[1]]
[1] 65534

[[1]][[2]]
[1] 65535

[[1]][[3]]
[1] 65536

[[1]][[4]]
[1] 65537
On 9/25/07, Patrick Burns <pburns at pburns.seanet.com> wrote: