I think R is good for packaging up complex code involving categorical data and shipping it. It is also better at data management. Octave/ matlab is more grace

I think R is good for packaging up complex code involving categorical data and shipping it. It is also better at data management. Octave/ matlab is more graceful at handling complex matrix manipulations than R, but poor at categorical data or data management. If you want to write your own algorithms, use Octave. If you want access to libraries, use R. (I personally find R ugly and matlab pretty.)