[Blindmath] Introduction

[Jonathan Godfrey]

Hi all,

R is a tongue in cheek dig at the S language developed at Bell which 
was commercialized and distributed as S-Plus. R is based heavily on S 
and the syntax is at least 99% common between the two. Certainly, 
most S routines people wrote in the past are implemented in R with 
little hassle. It took me about half a day to convert my entire set 
of files from my PhD (SPlus files) into R. Going back the other way 
would not be fun though.

R is actually named after the two men who started the programming. 
Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka were working together at the 
University of Auckland here in New Zealand. Most of the development 
of R is now controlled by a core development team from all over the 
globe, but the greatest two advantages that R has over all other 
statistical software is that it is 1. free, and 2. easily expanded to 
do anything at all that you want to do.

The best news for our community is that it takes so little to gain as 
complete access to it as we can ever expect from statistical 
software. The help is accessible, being html based and the  output 
files are plain text. Graphs are always going to be a challenge, but 
I note that at least someone else in the R community wanted SVG 
format enough that it has been developed. I haven't tested it yet as 
this is of little immediate use to me.

I still have a large back-log of messages from this list to work 
through and I note some are on the topic of R. I've had to prioritise 
a fair bit in the last couple of months due to the arrival of our 
first baby but if you have had R questions that haven't been 
answered, you might be best to direct them to me off list.

Jonathan





At 04:00 p.m. 20/06/2010, you wrote:
>Hi,
>  R is not the company name, but rather a spoof name based on an 
> earlier more elaborated stats software package produced by the same 
> company, Bell Labs???? called S+. If my memory is mis-serving, 
> anyone should feel free to correct my recollection.
>
>  by the way, welcome to the list. I am a graduate student studying 
> cognitive psychology at Ohio State.
>Many thanks,
>Christine
>
>
>Christine M. Szostak
>Graduate Student
>Language Perception Laboratory
>Department of Psychology, Cognitive Area
>The Ohio State University
>Columbus, Ohio
>szostak.1 at osu.edu
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Salisbury, Justin Mark" 
><SALISBURYJ08 at students.ecu.edu>
>To: "Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics" 
><blindmath at nfbnet.org>
>Sent: Saturday, June 19, 2010 10:39 PM
>Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Introduction
>
>
>>Does anyone know what the company "R" is?  I'm referring to the one 
>>mentioning in the email below.
>>
>>Thank you!
>>
>>Justin
>>
>>Justin M. Salisbury
>>Undergraduate Student
>>The University Honors Program
>>East Carolina University
>>salisburyj08 at students.ecu.edu
>>
>>"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a 
>>thought without accepting it."    -Aristotle
>>________________________________________
>>From: blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org [blindmath-bounces at nfbnet.org] 
>>on behalf of Jared Wright [wright.jaredm at gmail.com]
>>Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2010 12:10 AM
>>To: qubit; Blind Math list for those interested in mathematics
>>Subject: Re: [Blindmath] Introduction
>>
>>On 6/16/2010 10:07 PM, qubit wrote:
>>"You say you like statistics. Immediately when I hear that I think of
>>all the
>>complaints I hear on this list about statistics packages not being very
>>accessible."
>>I thought R was considered both one of the industry leaders for stats
>>and was completely accessible on account of being completely operable
>>through a CLI? Not really my realm of expertise at all, just thought
>>that's what I'd read on this list and others like it.
>>
>>
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>
>
>
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_____
Dr A. Jonathan R. Godfrey
Lecturer in Statistics
Institute of Fundamental Sciences
Massey University
Palmerston North

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