[R] Entire Organization Switching from SAS to R - Any experience?

Mike Prager mike.prager at noaa.gov
Fri Jul 17 16:20:17 CEST 2009


Kel Lam <lamkelf at gmail.com> wrote:

> My institute has been heavily dependent on SAS for the past while, and
> SAS is starting to charge us a very deep amount for license renewal.
> Since we are a non-profit organization that is definitely not
> sustainable.  The team is brainstorming possibility of switching to R,
> at least gradually.  I am talking about the entire institute with
> considerable number of analysts using SAS their entire career.
> There’s a handful of us using R regularly.  What kind of problems and
> challenges have you faced?  Any insight is much appreciated.  Thank
> you very much!
> 
> Kelvin

Background: I used SAS intensively for about 15 yr, I used
Systat for about 5 yr, and now I use R almost exclusively. The
group I work with has changed from mostly SAS to mostly R over
the years.

My advice is, think about training. Because SAS and R have such
different models of how statistical programming is structured,
it's not trivial to switch from one to the other.

A lot will depend on what sort of work you are doing. The main
problem we've experienced is that R does not easily handle very
large datasets on standard PC hardware. We still do some
processing with SAS in those cases, though we've been able to
reduce the number of SAS licenses we need. 


-- 
Mike Prager, NOAA, Beaufort, NC
* Opinions expressed are personal and not represented otherwise.
* Any use of tradenames does not constitute a NOAA endorsement.




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