# [R] Size of R user base

Martin Maechler maechler at stat.math.ethz.ch
Tue Apr 20 09:56:50 CEST 2004

>>>>> "BXC" == BXC (Bendix Carstensen) <bxc at steno.dk>
>>>>>     on Tue, 20 Apr 2004 09:10:42 +0200 writes:

BXC> I wonder if there is a count of the number of downloads
BXC> of each version of the R installations (for example
BXC> rw1090.exe)?

doesn't work either for several reasons,
some being

- students get R (and ESS/WinEdt and ...) on CDs

- many Unix users in the same organization use R installed only
once in a mounted (aka "network") file system.
Windows users as well, e.g. here at ETH, and probably in many
other places.

----

In general, I quite agree with Uwe's comments --- including those
about the ratio of R users and R mailing list subscribers; I'd
guess that to be around 10:1, though rather higher than lower.

About a confidence interval': If we log transform it becomes
feasible to give an interval I'm quite confident'' about:

log10(N) \in [3.5, 5.3]

but then that's probably not informative enough for management
decisions.

Martin

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