[R] A "rude" question

[John Dougherty]

On Wednesday 26 January 2005 21:09, msck9 at mizzou.edu wrote:
> Dear all,
>  I am beginner using R. I have a question about it. When you use it,
>  since it is written by so many authors, how do you know that the
>  results are trustable?(I don't want to affend anyone, also I trust
>  people). But I think this should be a question.
>
Almost all software - generally all "important" software - is has numerous 
authors.  Windows has hundreds, perhaps thousand of coders.  So too does 
Unix.  The big difference between open source and closed source is not in the 
number of authors.  Rather it is in the open availability of the code.  
Arguably, if there is sufficient interest in an open source project, studies 
have indicated that the code is likely to be superior to that of a comparable 
closed source program.  This a probability though, not a natural law.

If you are concerned about the trustworthiness of R, then perhaps the best 
gauge is that some of our favorite if occasionally curmudgeonly authors on 
this list are also experts in S and S-Plus, the proprietary, closed source 
language of which R is also a dialect.  They evidently know what they're 
doing and work comfortably in both domains.

If you compare statistical results using R and Excel, there is no question 
that R is superior, but that will also be true if you tested Excel against 
S-Plus, or SAS, or NCSS - all proprietary programs, or any number of other 
closed and open source programs designed to do statistical analyses.  At the 
same time just about any spreadsheet, open or closed source will also suffer 
in a similar comparison.

If you want a more information about the safety of Excel I would suggest this 
site:

http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/spreadsheet_addiction.html

Read the various links. Beyond this there is a broad literature available on 
the risks and benefits of open and close source programs.  Read it.

JWDougherty