

To R or Not to R? - fogus
http://undirectedgrad.blogspot.com/2009/08/to-r-or-not-to-r.html

======
alec
<http://incanter.org/>

Incanter is a "Clojure-based, R-like statistical computing and graphics
environment for the JVM". Ready to replace R? I don't know, R has a lot of
libraries. Worth a look? Definitely.

~~~
herdrick
Colt (Parallel Colt, really) is what Incanter is built upon and it already has
a lot of libraries. I suppose R has more, though.

However, there is no Incanter community yet - not even a mailing list. That
matters.

~~~
herdrick
OK, now there is a mailing list. <http://groups.google.com/group/incanter/>

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kragen
I wonder why he isn't considering Octave, given that his lab already has a
pile of existing Matlab code. Also, I think it's relatively easy to get Python
to go faster than Matlab: <http://www.scipy.org/PerformancePython> so maybe
that's a reasonable approach if some people are already using it but just
having trouble making it go fast.

------
ssn
I can only confirm that R has a great community of savy-users ready to help.
See the r-help mailing list.

~~~
jacoblyles
I tried to use R for a project, and I found the small size of the community
and available documentation to be frustrating. In addition, R suffers from the
"curse of C" , where it is near impossible to google for help on a language
with a one-letter name. Though, perhaps I just managed to miss that particular
mailing list in my search for R materials.

In contrast, Matlab has excellent resources available for the beginner.

~~~
ssn
Try <http://rseek.org> \- a Google custom search engine for R materials.

------
fburnaby
I'm in exactly the same situation. MATLAB and R are so different, yet there's
no obvious way to distinguish which will be better for the job.

Thanks to those who are also proposing alternatives. However, if the author is
in anything of the same situation that I am, then it must be one of the two.
Anything that's not "tried and true" seems to make too many people (bosses,
clients) squeamish.

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profquail
So, what was the problem with Matlab that made you want to switch to R? I
didn't see anything in the article about it...

Also, there are some good machine learning libraries for .NET, which you could
call from C# or F#. If you don't need all the other features of Matlab or R
(or you want some of the .NET features), maybe you consider that as an option.

EDIT: Also...there are plugins for Matlab (both commercial and free) that will
use CUDA to accelerate the calculations. Depending on what you're doing, it
could be a big boost to your research, so check that out as well.

~~~
chaostheory
"free (very important!) if we want to run a job on 100 machines (e.g. in the
cloud), I believe currently you need a matlab licence for each one"

~~~
gaius
No-one pays for high-end commercial software like that; you find a salesman
near the end of the financial year when he wants to make his numbers and he
cuts you a deal on a site license.

With computation tho' time very literally is money. If you can get the job
done with commercial product X in the same time with less kit than it would
take to do with free product Y, the point at which it becomes worthwhile to do
so - if at all - is a no-brainer.

~~~
chaostheory
Easier said than done; besides why deal with complicated proprietary licenses
when an open one will do? You have to account for future upgrades too (they
may not get you now but they'll nail you hard later) Plus it doesn't sound
like the guy who wrote the post is shipping a product ( which is when many
open licenses start giving some trouble).

I do agree if everything overall adds up in favor of the proprietary solution,
then they should just use it; but in many cases I think the open product will
have the long term edge especially in this economy

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jimbokun
Wish I had the time to try the same task in R, NumPy/SciPy and Incanter to get
a feel for the relative strengths and weaknesses of each. If anyone does have
the time, and cares to write it up in a blog, I would be happy to read the
results. :)

------
thunk
tor V ~tor => T

~~~
kqr2
Yes, the proposition is always true, but that doesn't help him to make a
decision.

At work, some people prefer R; others Matlab. The nice thing bout R is that
it's free so you can have it on multiple machines.

But I'm wondering why he hasn't considered other alternatives like octave,
etc.

