As a follow up to my prior post on the R statistical analysis tool, there have been a couple of interesting recent blog posts on the same topic, notably:
Comparison of data analysis packages: R, Mathlab, SciPy, Excel, SAS, SPSS, Stat, from from the AI and Social Science Blog, and
How Google and Facebook are Using R from the Data Evolution Blog.
Some quick takeaways:
- Google and Facebook are big users of R, which is the most popular analytics tool at Google.
- They use R for development, but not implementation of models, for which Python or C++ are the tools of choice.
- The biggest debate seems to rage between users of R and SAS. Many, many interesting takes on this question if the comments to the first post.
- Ability to handle large data sets is one of the big differentiators and drivers of preferences.
- Some contend there is an age split, with younger users tending to prefer R and older users tending to prefer SAS.
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