[R] Making a case for using R in Academia

[Marc Schwartz]

On Wed, 2006-11-08 at 15:55 -0500, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:
> Hello, new to the list, first message.
> 
> This question perhaps might be more appropriate to R-sig-teaching,  
> and I'd be happy to take it there if this is not the right place for it.
> 
> I am teaching applied statistics at a small liberal arts college with  
> limited resources, and we are currently using SPSS for our courses.  
> Mainly the reason for this, as I understand it, is that this is what  
> is used "out in the real world", or at least this is our perception  
> of it. I have only used R for my own stuff for about six months, and  
> my training is not in statistics, so I am not very aware of what it  
> can do in other disciplines, especially Sociology and Psychology. I  
> would like to make a case to the other departments here for using R  
> instead, so I was hoping that there might be some resources out there  
> that talk about the extend in which R is being used outside of  
> academia, or in general any other resources that talk about R as a  
> practical alternative to the other non-free statistical packages.  
> Perhaps some statistics, or particular examples of use? Any links  
> would be greatly appreciated.
> 
> Thanks for any thoughts/input into this.

There are such discussions sprinkled over the last few years in the
r-help archives that you might want to review. There is a lengthy one
here:

http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/R/Rhelp02a/archive/35616.html

and there are others, though the proper key words seem to be escaping me
at the moment.

Also, there are at least two articles in R News that you might find of
interest:

Marc Schwartz. The decision to use R. R News, 4(1):2-5, June 2004.

Bill Pikounis and Andy Liaw. The value of R for preclinical
statisticians. R News, 5(1):44-47, May 2005.


There are others as well relative to how R is used in various domains,
but these might be a good start and came to mind relatively
easily...  :-)

HTH,

Marc Schwartz