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I like Python better as a language, but Python's libraries take more work to understand and the APIs aren't very unified. R is much more regular and the documen

by c3534l 11y ago

I like Python better as a language, but Python's libraries take more work to understand and the APIs aren't very unified. R is much more regular and the documentation is better. Even complicated and obscure machine learning tasks have good support in R. BUT the performance for R can be very, very annoying. Assignment is slow as all hell and it can often take work to figure out how to rephrase complicated functions in a way that R can figure out how to do efficiently. I think being much more functional than Python works well for data. I mean the L in LISP stands for list! Visualizations are also easier and more intuitive in R, too, IMO. Especially since half the time you can just wrap some data in "plot" and R will figure our which one it should use. I think the conclusion of the article is correct. R is more pleasant for mathier type stuff, while Python is the better general-purpose language. If your jobs involves showing people powerpoint presentations of the mathematical analysis you've done,you'd probably want to use R. If, on the other hand, you're prototyping data-driven applications, Python would probably be better. That said, I really like Julia, but can't justify really diving into it at this point. :\

baldfat 11y ago
> prototyping data-driven applications, Python would probably be better I would disagree. Python's libraries are really reimplementing R in Python (Mainly Pandas). I find R to be very flexible and especially in the last 5 years with Hadley Wickham's libraries things are concise and very powerful. Please look at dplyr and see how this new way fo doing R works. Especially with piping with %>%. https://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/dplyr/vignettes/introduction.html https://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/dplyr/vignettes/introd... Code in R can look like this beautiful code (If you don't code in R and I would expect anyone can see what is happening) This is why I disagree that prototyping in Python would be better.: flights %>% group_by(year, month, day) %>% select(arr_delay, dep_delay) summarise( arr = mean(arr_delay, na.rm = TRUE), dep = mean(dep_delay, na.rm = TRUE)) %>% filter(arr > 30 | dep > 30) Python has .pipe but I find it strange it goes to the new line before the items. Python Code: >>> (df.pipe(h) ... .pipe(g, arg1=a) ... .pipe((f, 'arg2'), arg1=a, arg3=c) ... )
- avdempsey 11y ago
  I find the following Pandas code pretty easy to read: (df .groupby(['a', 'b', 'c'], as_index=False) .agg({'d': sum, 'e': mean, 'f', np.std}) .assign(g=lambda x: x.a / x.c) .query("g > 0.05") .merge(df2, on='a')) There are now methods in pandas to do pretty much anything, so you can chain them together into one easy-to-read manipulation without lots of intermediate variables.
solomatov 11y ago
> R is much more regular Compare scikit learn to other a large number of R libraries with incompatible interfaces. In this respect Python is more regular.

by c3534l 11y ago

baldfat 11y ago

> prototyping data-driven applications, Python would probably be better I would disagree. Python's libraries are really reimplementing R in Python (Mainly Pandas). I find R to be very flexible and especially in the last 5 years with Hadley Wickham's libraries things are concise and very powerful. Please look at dplyr and see how this new way fo doing R works. Especially with piping with %>%. https://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/dplyr/vignettes/introduction.html https://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/dplyr/vignettes/introd... Code in R can look like this beautiful code (If you don't code in R and I would expect anyone can see what is happening) This is why I disagree that prototyping in Python would be better.: flights %>% group_by(year, month, day) %>% select(arr_delay, dep_delay) summarise( arr = mean(arr_delay, na.rm = TRUE), dep = mean(dep_delay, na.rm = TRUE)) %>% filter(arr > 30 | dep > 30) Python has .pipe but I find it strange it goes to the new line before the items. Python Code: >>> (df.pipe(h) ... .pipe(g, arg1=a) ... .pipe((f, 'arg2'), arg1=a, arg3=c) ... )

avdempsey 11y ago
I find the following Pandas code pretty easy to read: (df .groupby(['a', 'b', 'c'], as_index=False) .agg({'d': sum, 'e': mean, 'f', np.std}) .assign(g=lambda x: x.a / x.c) .query("g > 0.05") .merge(df2, on='a')) There are now methods in pandas to do pretty much anything, so you can chain them together into one easy-to-read manipulation without lots of intermediate variables.

solomatov 11y ago

> R is much more regular Compare scikit learn to other a large number of R libraries with incompatible interfaces. In this respect Python is more regular.