[R] what is R best for; what should one learn in addition to R

[Stefan Grosse]

On Mon, 20 Apr 2009 11:49:29 -0400 Juliet Hannah
<juliet.hannah at gmail.com> wrote:

JH> I've been working with R for a couple of years, and I've
JH> been able to get most of the things done that I needed (sometimes in
JH> a roundabout way). A few experienced statisticians told me that
JH> R is best for interactive data analysis, but for large-scale
JH> computations, one needs something else.

Depends on what is meant by large-scale computations and you yourself
intend to do. I know of people doing optimization stuff which needs a
lot of computational power. They use Matlab since it is easy for them
to use multiple processors (+multiple pc's). R at the moment only uses
one processor and also does not yet (there is a project working on it)
something like just in time compilation which appears to be in Matlab. 

However R is for free and flexible so there are ways to deal with some
analysis that need more computational power. 

my 2c
Stefan