TO most of you, free statistical software means nothing but to an Economist at a small university - JACKPOT!

So to find the latest New York Times article RAVING about "R" is quite amazing.  Even the layperson might here about it!

Here is an important recommendation:

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The great beauty of R is that you can modify it to do all sorts of things,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And you have a lot of prepackaged stuff that’s already available, so you’re standing on the shoulders of giants.”

OK - most of you don't know Hal, he wrote the only Microeconomics text used for eons for potential Ph. D. Graduate students.  Highly mathematical, he used calculus AND set theory to succinctly explain the basic analysis of firms and consumers, etc.  So for Hal Varian to extol the virtues of "R" is a high compliment indeed! 

The article is quite interesting to explain why the professors who developed R made it free and why they believed in the free open source method for the program.  Six years they spent on writing the initial program and believe that if they went commercial, maybe they would have sold 5 copies!  grin  Now at least a quarter of a million people use it, including huge corporations! 

Oh and SAS is worried - no doubt!  Laughing - we can definitely do better than SAS!  (As a person who has spent WAAAYYY to much time trying to figure out SAS software, I can vouch for that!)