News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by xtho on Sunday April 18, 2010 @02:28AM (#1274474)
Since the person in question is a programmer: RTFM

I'd say R is much closer to how a software developer is used to work than a spreadsheet. But I understand that many people who have no practice in software development would rather choose a spreadsheet in such a situation.

Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by Calamitous on Sunday April 18, 2010 @01:10PM (#1275102)
Thank you, your response managed to be completely useless while being simultaneously condescending and making you look like an ass who is incapable of grasping a simple point; that I have no experience in statistics, but a great deal in programming, and don't know where to start.

Here, let me rephrase it monosyllabically so that you're capable of understanding the question:

Which "FM" would be good for me to "R"?

Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by xtho on Sunday April 18, 2010 @01:39PM (#1275136)
I assume you want to visualize the data but don't want to do any fancy statistics:

1. Tutorial

2. Language definition

3. Import/Export + sqldf or rodbc

4. Either Lattice[1] or ggplot2[2], and [3]

I'm glad I could be of help. :-)

[1] http://lmdvr.r-forge.r-project.org/figures/figures.html

[2] http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/

[3] http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/

Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by Calamitous on Sunday April 18, 2010 @09:58PM (#1275866)
Thank you for your unexpectedly calm and helpful response to my bad-mood snarkotron. :)
Re:When to use Excel, when to use R? by util on Sunday April 18, 2010 @02:45PM (#1275246)
"An Introduction to R" could be a good place to start along with the other manuals: http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html (I think you can also access these through the help menu when interacting with R via the GUI.)

Also, to make nice looking plots, you might as well dive straight into Hadley Wickham's ggplot2 once you've gotten through the very basics: http://had.co.nz/ggplot2/