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The whole tidyverse set of packages for R. Its a DSL for data analysis that makes heavy use of R macros. The vocabulary and mental model that it has about data

The whole tidyverse set of packages for R. Its a DSL for data analysis that makes heavy use of R macros. The vocabulary and mental model that it has about data transformation is superior to any other analysis package I've used. Pandas/Numpy is close but R's macro/custom operators make everything much more seamless.

shepherdjerred 5y ago
Is it really better than python? I'm not too much in the data analysis space, but it seems like with python's dominance in machine learning that R's days are numbered.
- sthatipamala 5y ago
  Strictly speaking about data analysis, tidyverse is way better. Even in adjacent spaces such as plotting and interactive data, tools like Shiny [0] are ahead of the Python ecosystem. R is definitely weird language, not as useful for general purpose computing, and has far less marketshare. But that's kinda the point of pg's essay. [0] https://shiny.rstudio.com/ https://shiny.rstudio.com/
- Dumblydorr 5y ago
  I've done data analysis for a decade in the healthcare space, ML is not at all common. Basic statistics and data munging is 99% of what you need, you're mostly doing SQL to gather the data, then a lot of older folks still use SAS, my god. R looks way more "shiny" than SAS, nevermind python. Python is trendier in all other fields it seems, it really hasn't penetrated healthcare in my experience. R on the other hand, so many healthcare researchers come from academics and statistics courses where R is way way more popular than python.
- goatlover 5y ago
  Unless you think machine learning by is going to put statisticians out of work, R will stick around. It also has a lot of libraries useful to scientists.
CornCobs 5y ago
In particular I'd shoutout ggplot as an amazing DSL for graphics. It truly is a language of itself for describing visualizations as mappings from data to graphical layers. And yet being a library it seamlessly interacts with the rest of R just as you expect

shepherdjerred 5y ago

Is it really better than python? I'm not too much in the data analysis space, but it seems like with python's dominance in machine learning that R's days are numbered.

sthatipamala 5y ago
Strictly speaking about data analysis, tidyverse is way better. Even in adjacent spaces such as plotting and interactive data, tools like Shiny [0] are ahead of the Python ecosystem. R is definitely weird language, not as useful for general purpose computing, and has far less marketshare. But that's kinda the point of pg's essay. [0] https://shiny.rstudio.com/ https://shiny.rstudio.com/
Dumblydorr 5y ago
I've done data analysis for a decade in the healthcare space, ML is not at all common. Basic statistics and data munging is 99% of what you need, you're mostly doing SQL to gather the data, then a lot of older folks still use SAS, my god. R looks way more "shiny" than SAS, nevermind python. Python is trendier in all other fields it seems, it really hasn't penetrated healthcare in my experience. R on the other hand, so many healthcare researchers come from academics and statistics courses where R is way way more popular than python.
goatlover 5y ago
Unless you think machine learning by is going to put statisticians out of work, R will stick around. It also has a lot of libraries useful to scientists.

CornCobs 5y ago

In particular I'd shoutout ggplot as an amazing DSL for graphics. It truly is a language of itself for describing visualizations as mappings from data to graphical layers. And yet being a library it seamlessly interacts with the rest of R just as you expect