Talk:R (programming language)

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Contents 1 R and Scheme 2 name 3 Advert tag 4 Criticism 5 Quick tutorial 6 Mege CRAN into R (programming language) 7 GUI 8 Naming motivation 9 Robert Gentleman 10 de-facto standard 11 Fair use rationale for Image:R gui on os x.png 12 GNU R 13 Comparo

[edit] R and Scheme

I don't understand the reference to Scheme. R's semantics are derived from S's not Scheme's semantics. Is the sentence in question saying that S's semantics are derived from Scheme's? S and R do indeed support functional programming, but I think it's misleading to say that the semantics of R or S are derived from Scheme. S (and hence R, which is an open source implementation of S) differ from Scheme in so many ways that I think the reference to Scheme should be removed from the page. Do others agree?

The main way in which R's semantics are similar to Scheme (and different from those of S-PLUS) is the evaluation model for nested function definitions, as explained in lexical scoping section of the R FAQ. - Avenue 08:23, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Lexical scoping into nested functions is not really what I first think of when someone mentions Scheme. Perhaps Scheme was the first language to do it thus, but these days most languages with nested functions work that way. Mentioning Scheme gives me the expectataion of, say, having continuations in R, or the lisp-ish "everything is a list" idea, or scheme-like macros. None of that is in R (as far as I can see). I think Scheme is misleading. Subtilior 20:35, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Saying "everything is a vector" in R might be too strong, but it isn't far wrong. Your other expectations are probably much more of a stretch, but still have an element of truth as far as I understand. Our comment about Scheme is attributed to R's developers, and I think it reflects their position, at least as expressed back in Ihaka and Gentleman (1996): "The resulting language [R] is very similar in appearance to S, but the underlying implementation and semantics are derived from Scheme. In fact, we implemented the language by first writing an interpreter for a Scheme subset and then progressively mutating it to resemble S." Would you be happier if this was discussed later in the article (maybe in the Development section), rather than in the lead paragraph? -- Avenue 14:19, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess the "is considered by its developers" clause is enough of a get out. I don't really have a problem. Subtilior 06:31, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] name

Shouldn't this be "R programming environment"? We already have an article about the programming language S Btyner 20:11, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

The S language is now more a small family of languages or dialects than a single language, so I think that the "R programming language" is a distinct concept. And the current title does follow the general guideline given in Wikipedia:Naming conventions (languages). However I'm not entirely happy with it either. I would like the title to reflect the statistical emphasis of the language/environment, e.g. "R statistical computing environment". -- Avenue 01:41, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Advert tag

Even Free Software articles suffer from advertitis on here. I'll try to tidy this later. Chris Cunningham 00:43, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

You added the comment, after a line discussing R's interface, "what are we discussing here? The compiler? The IDE? This line can probably be removed if it's just the compiler". Although there are a couple of experimental compilers, R is typically run as an interpreted language in an interactive session. Submit a line of code (or maybe a few lines), read the output, submit some more, and so on. Some of the usual "programming language" connotations don't really apply here, which is one reason why it might be good to change the article's title (see above). -- Avenue 11:20, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Right - in that case a description of the normal runtime usage would be a great thing to elaborate on. Chris Cunningham 12:01, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism

Tha anonymous criticism about the speed of R is rebutted by the benchmark results at http://www.sciviews.org/benchmark/ This is also explained earlier in the article. The criticisms are thus removed. Den fjättrade ankan 15:25, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Quick tutorial

Why was it eliminated? I had a hard time finding how to start using R. I still do - it seems that every help file or documentation is directed either to those that know nothing or to those that know everything. Albmont 01:35, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

While your description of R documentation is astute (unfortunately), WP essentially is not a venue for "how to" information. It is a venue for "what is" information. Note I didn't delete it (nor would I), but if called on a user vote, would agree to delete for that reason. Baccyak4H 02:41, 30 September 2006 (UTC)

I had learned SAS programming in school, but cannot afford to purchase it, so was very happy to find R,..., until I tried to learn how to use it. There is a real need to have a bare bones, easy introduction to R. At present, what I find as free information on how to use it drops me in the middle of a thick forest. If I could vote, I would say put back that Quick tutorial.

I'm in the same situation, and have found R a difficult study as well. Purchasing the Crawley (2005) book cited in the main article was something of a breakthrough for me. A set of exercises for the book are freely available on the author's website, and have some utility even unaccompanied by the book.

--Belgrano 14:48, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Tutorials are not exactly encyclopedic, and should be kept off of here, but feel free to add to (the barely started) B:R Programming wikibook. The main R page [1]] has some good links to other tutorials and resources (much better than wiki-land has to offer). It's not the prettiest of website, but it is very resourceful. +mwtoews 17:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mege CRAN into R (programming language)

There really isn't much to say about CRAN in a separate article. At most, it could use a small section in the R article (say R (programming language)#Comprehensive R Archive Network?). +mwtoews 18:28, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Done. +mwtoews 21:03, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

The article CRAN has been brought back to life. I suggest again to merge it back to this article, for the same reasons at the top of this section. +mt 03:49, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

I agree. -- Avenue 06:46, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Done, and I double checked the four language interwiki "CRAN" articles, which all link to R (programming language)#CRAN for the "en" edition. +mt 21:05, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GUI

I`ve been trying to find the GUi for R but I can`t find them. Anyone can put a link when it say that graphical user interfaces are available? where, thanks ;)--ometzit<col> 00:33, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

A few are listed in the Productivity tools section. And here's a more [comprehensive list. -- Avenue 01:52, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naming motivation

The article currently states "It was originally created by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman (hence the name R)..." My understanding was that the name "R" was chosen to parallel "S", which it is a dialect of, roughly speaking. While I suppose both could be true (that is, it is not named "T"), a citation would be nice here. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 15:56, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Better late than never — done ! Schutz 16:10, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Excellent. And what a source too ;-) Baccyak4H (Yak!) 18:30, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Robert Gentleman

The internal link (under the emblem) for Robert Gentleman directs itself to another person with the same name ( a baseball player). I am temporarily going to remove the link until a seperate article/disambiguation page is created. Grokmenow 15:24, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] de-facto standard

This claim of R being the de-facto standard for statistics computing is backed up by the article "USING THE R STATISTICAL COMPUTING ENVIRONMENT TO TEACH SOCIAL STATISTICS COURSES" which I have found only two citations from in Google, both in papers using R. Now this is a bit of a strong claim to make and I think it deserves a more credible source. Frenchwhale 16:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

I'll agree that the statement is too bold with no reliable sources. I've been looking around Google Scholar for any indication of "statistics software" and "standard" or "de-facto", and my results are very mixed. Basically all the statistical programs you can think of (SAS, Microsoft Excel, Sigma Plot, SPSS, Minitab, Stata, as well as S-PLUS and R) have been touted as "standard", which leads me to think that these claims are POVs. I don't think any of these programs can really be considered "de facto" at this moment (except for certain niches, such as biostatistics). I think it is safe to say that R has an expanding user-base as suggested by the posting rate on the help list, and the increasing number of contributed packages. +mt 18:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

In technical applications, the main reason that R is used is simply because it is free. In bioinformatics, its use is widespread among researchers and the private sector simply because it would be cost-prohibitive for large private organizations (i.e. pharmaceutical companies) to fork out the cash for licences for other programs such as SAS or Matlab. I have no references for this, just years of personal experience working with these people. This article in general is rather unbalanced - for instance there is no discussion of the limitations or criticisms of R (articles on the other software have this). A major fault with R is its inability to efficiently handle for-loops, resulting in the need for clumsy workarounds, something that should be mentioned here. - 52 Pickup 07:20, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the main reason it's used is that its development (bug fixing, new feature incorporation, etc.) is far faster and more transparent than say the products listed above. Of course, that is a consequence of its open-source status, which also implies its price. That said however, saying "de-facto standard" or the like without sourcing is original research as well as POV. Saying "mainstream" or something similar would be more defensible, IMO. But I have to object to a criticisms discussion for this or even any software (with possible high profile and noteworthy exceptions like Tufte's criticisms of PowerPoint or Fateman's criticisms of Mathematica). Perhaps limitations, or comparisons with others, may be more appropriate. Any software product is designed to do certain things, but certainly not all things; saying "well it can't do X" seems highly unencyclopedic. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 12:47, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:R gui on os x.png

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BetacommandBot (talk) 20:00, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GNU R

What is GNU R (redirect)? --Abdull (talk) 16:48, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Comparo

Might be nice to see a comparison between R and S-Plus in this page. Message me if you would be willing to help put something rudimentary together. Swism (talk) 15:17, 25 February 2008 (UTC)