[R] Excel

Gabor Grothendieck ggrothendieck at gmail.com
Wed Aug 29 22:05:29 CEST 2007


You would still need the interactive GUI to get to the point where its
at all comparable to Excel.  Using rpad you could construct such
an interface although its a bit of work.  Here is an example using
rpad and reshape:

http://www.rpad.org/Rpad/DataExplorer.Rpad

On 8/29/07, Bert Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com> wrote:
> Erich:
>
> This is not a comment either for or against the use of Excel. I only wish to
> point out that AFAICS, Hadley Wickham's reshape package offers all the pivot
> table functionality and more.
>
> If I am wrong about this, please let me and everyone else know.
>
>
> Bert Gunter
> Genentech Nonclinical Statistics
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Erich Neuwirth
> Sent: Wednesday, August 29, 2007 11:43 AM
> To: r-help
> Subject: Re: [R] Excel
>
> Excel bashing can be fun but also can be dangerous because
> you are makeing your life harder than necessary.
> Statisticians meanwhile know that the numerics of statistical
> computation can be quite bad, therefore one should not use them.
> But using our (we = Thomas Baier + Erich Neuwirth) RExcel addin either
> with the R(D)COM server or with rcom (package on CRAN) allows you to use
> all the nice features of Excel (yes, there are quite a few) and use R as
> as the computational engine within Excel. The formula
> =RApply("var",A1:A1000) in an Excel cell for example will use R to
> compute the variance of the data in column A in Excel. If you change any
> of the values in the range A1:A1000 will automatically recompute the
> variance.
>
> There is one feature in Excel which is extremely convenient, Pivot
> tables. Anybody doing any work as statistical consultant really ought to
> know about Pivot tables, and I am still surprised how many statisticians
> do not know about it. Neither Gnumeric nor OpenOffice Calc offer
> comparably convenient ways working with multidimensional tables.
>
> I think the answer to the question
> "Excel or R" of course is "Excel and R".
>
>
>
> --
> Erich Neuwirth, University of Vienna
> Faculty of Computer Science
> Computer Supported Didactics Working Group
> Visit our SunSITE at http://sunsite.univie.ac.at
> Phone: +43-1-4277-39464 Fax: +43-1-4277-39459
>
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>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>



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