When to use Excel, when to use R?

Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by dmnd on Saturday April 17, 2010 @02:57PM (#1273509)

I'm just starting to go beyond Excel, but I chose to learn Python and scipy over R due to reading that R's scripting language didn't match up to Python. Am I handicapping myself by ignoring R?

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Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by brettnak on Saturday April 17, 2010 @03:01PM (#1273520)

You could always use sage if you want scientific computing in python. It makes interacting between different libraries like SciPy, NumPy, and a ton of other math libraries pretty strait forward. You can even choose your version of numbers if you want. It also has rpy.

www.sagemath.com

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Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by revorad on Saturday April 17, 2010 @02:59PM (#1273515)

I don't think you are handicapped, but it would be good to familiarise yourself with R. R as a language may not match up to Python, but it is quite powerful. You can do a lot in few lines of code. And I think it's quite easy to pick up the basics.

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Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by tel on Saturday April 17, 2010 @06:57PM (#1273913)

R is not such a terrible language, though it is quirky. Unfortunately, yes, you are kind of handicapping yourself. The libraries behind R are, for statistical purposes, infinitely better than Python.

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Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by jimbokun on Saturday April 17, 2010 @09:09PM (#1274092)

Anyone know if RPy is any good?

http://rpy.sourceforge.net/

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Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by sandGorgon on Saturday April 17, 2010 @03:41PM (#1273585)

have you figured out how to set up the whole toolchain of scipy + lapack + GotoBLAS (or something) ?

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