My two cents on the S-plus/R debate

["Overstreet, Jason (FL51)" <Jason.Overstreet@honeywell.com>]

I have been reading the debate about S-plus and R.  I think that for the hard core programmers, it doesn't make a difference. However,  there are some (like me) that are amateur programmers that don't like to code anything over 100 lines and like the nice-point-and-click GUI.  I think that Insightful would do well to continue to give nice GUI options for the amateur programmers like me.  The other side is that I was able to create nice looking reports in SAS in the form of Word documents or HTML formats.  I am still tinkering with this, but have not found happiness to date in regards to this.  That being said, I think that S-plus will get to this first (based on the graphs to PowerPoint capability).  I also like Bill Meeker's Splida which requires Splus.

In short, if you are a command line freak and want to run simulations, Monte Carlos, and the like, then go with R.  If you are a GUI junkie and have no intention of kicking the habit, then Splus is the way to go. 

I also hope that Splus will continue 1) to increase the capability of being able to "talk" to other software packages and expand the reporting capabilities. 2) add more options to GUI. 

I know that when I do a test of equal variance, I use Minitab.  When I wrote Insightful, they suggested that I write Bartlett's test from scratch.  I wrote it from scratch just to see how hard it would be which took a few hours out of my life, but this is an example of such a basic test, that Insightful should have included on the GUI.  If I were the CEO of Insightful, there would be no way that I would let Minitab have a built in canned capability that Splus doesn't have.  Convenience is the only thing that Splus has over R and if they want to stay in business, then they better not forget this.

So I guess it is a matter of personal preference and needs and the end of my two-cents! 

Jason Overstreet

Statistician

Honeywell DSES

(727) 539-3964