Comments on: An article attacking R gets responses from the R blogosphere – some reflections

By: Mark

Mark — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:20:52 +0000

Patrick, if you have no idea why your post comes across as arrogant and obnoxious, I think you need to go back to Social Interaction 101 and reconsider how you address the rest of the world; you do yourself, and your arguments, no favours.

By: R and the Google Summer of Code 2010 – accepted students and projects! | R-statistics blog

Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:46:55 +0000

[...] to the layman-statistician that some people recently wrote to be one of R’s weak spots (while other bloogers wrote back that this is o.k., still no one refuted that R doesn’t compete with the point-and-click of [...]

By: R, the Epic Fail blog, and SOFA Statistics « Statistics Open For All

R, the Epic Fail blog, and SOFA Statistics « Statistics Open For All — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 06:33:27 +0000

[...] lively community (many of whom were galvanised into making a response by the Epic Fail blog (see An article attacking R gets responses from the R blogosphere – some reflections on the phenomenon and R and the Next Big Thing as an example). So on what terms could it be [...]

By: patrick

patrick — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 05:32:26 +0000

The reason it is causing such a big deal is because it was a rather pathetically framed argument against R. Nearly every point she made was not backed up by evidence, just an amateur who only knows point and click.

1- SAS graphics are atrocious. ggplot2 makes better plots than anything the entire SAS team could put together.

2- You can use the R pkg reshape for your data structuring needs.

3- R is FREE! How is that not cheaper than SAS?

4- Maybe if you knew how to use a computer, you could install it. It’s called download and double-click, done.

5- R can hook into most any type of Database. It can even work with Hadoop.

6- The SAS language does not even compare to R’s.

By: Tal Galili

Tal Galili — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:27:18 +0000

Thank you for the encouragement Ralph, it caries weight.

Regarding the rest of your comment – I will reply once I’ll have something of value to say

Best wishes,
Tal

By: Ralph

Ralph — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 15:17:00 +0000

Hi Tal,

Nice post and I definitely agree with your idea that the R blogging community will be strengthened by discussing each other’s writing and cross-linking articles.

The R community definitely contains some passionate characters which I think is reflected in the quality and range of available software. There is also probably a weariness in the constant “R is difficult” mantra that gets repeated during discussions of statistical software, in addition to the “R is free” with the implication that this is the only reason why people would use the system. However I will avoid ranting and try and make some useful contributions of my own.

Keep up your blogging Tal but don’t let your fingers get worn down!

Best wishes
Ralph

By: Tal Galili

Tal Galili — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 12:02:42 +0000

Hi John,

I agree with what you wrote.
The reaction is impressive (thus motivating me to write this post), and at the same time underscores the passion of the R community (as you said, probably because it wasn’t “that much” of an assault).

BTW, please note that the post with which I replied to Dr De Mars post, I didn’t fight off here “attack”, but focused on the question she raised (“what is the next big thing”), and connected that (from my perspective) to R.

Hope to see you more around,
Cheers,
Tal

By: John

John — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 11:51:46 +0000

I’m surprised this article caused such a reaction. It’s not even primarily about R; it’s primarily speculation about what the next big thing will be. And almost parenthetically she says she doesn’t think R is it. Maybe the fact that this wasn’t a frontal assault on R underscores how passionate the R community is.

My favorite line from her article was “I have lived over half a century now and discovered that life holds very few multiple choice tests.”