I would like to start a dialogue to gauge your opinions and hear about your experiences using R Studio. I am in the market for a new statistical software. I have experience with SPSS, however, I am very interested in R. Before I start to teach myself a new statistical package I would like to hear from you.
Cheers
I use both SAS and R for my job (and have used SPSS in the past). Flexibility is main reason why R is so popular. As analyses get more advanced and adaptive, there are times when no package/program/function exists to do what you want to do, with R it's pretty intuitive to just program it yourself. By being a programming language itself, you can go under the hood and adjust, this isn't as easily done with SAS/SPSS/STATA etc. Personally, I feel handcuffed somewhat when using SAS.
Also, R is great for computational methods such as bootstrapping, simulating, machine learning etc. and with Bayesian analyses - methods that are becoming utilized more and more. Producing graphs in R has an almost infinite amount of flexibility and customization whereas I struggle getting things exactly how I want in SAS.
What SAS and SPSS can do, they do it very well. But the range of things they can do is much much more limited compared to R, and because it's free/open-source it's only gaining popularity in industry.
Thank you for your answer Joe. I think the aspect of R I find so attractive is the graphing capabilities.
Kind regards,
Laura
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