[R] R and clinical studies

[Cody_Hamilton at Edwards.com]

Thank you to all those that responded to Delphine's original post on R and
clinical studies.  They have provided much food for thought.

I had a couple of follow up questions/comments.  Andrew is very correct in
pointing out that there are classes and workshops available for R.  It's my
understanding that there are even commercial versions of R that now provide
formal commercial-style courses.  And at any rate, the money saved by
potentially avoiding pricey software could certainly justify any training
expense in time or money  - this assumes of course that the pricey software
could be dispensed with (I suspect that would take considerable time at my
current company as so many legacy projects have been done in proprietary
software).  I still think that R provides less 'hand-holding' and requires
more initiative (which may be more or less present on a per
programmer/statistician basis).

I guess one could always integrate R/Splus in with SAS, as Terry's group
has done at Mayo - I will probably do this at least as a start.  I have a
few concerns with regards to this approach (these may be needless concerns,
but I will venture expressing them anyway).  First, I'm worried about the
possibility of compatability concerns (will anyone be worried about a SAS
dataset read into R or vice-versa?).  Second, I would prefer focusing all
my learning on one package if possible.  I actually have more experience
with SAS (as do others in my group), and if the switch to R is to be made I
would like to make that switch as complete as possible.   This would also
avoid requiring new hires to know both languages.  Third, if SAS is to be
kept around, it defeats one of the main advantages of having open source
code in the first place (R is wonderfully free!).  Like Mayo, Baylor Health
(my previous employer) used both Splus and SAS.  I was warned that data
manipulation would be much more difficult in R/Splus than it was in SAS.
To be honest, and I say this humbly realizing that most posters to this
list have much more experience than I, I haven't found data manipulation to
be that much more difficult in R/Splus (at least as I have gained
experience in R/Splus).   I can think of two exceptions (1) large datasets
and (2) SAS seems to play nicer with MS products (e.g. PROC IMPORT seemed
to read in messy Excel spreadsheets better than importData in Splus).  Is
it possible (and I again say this with MUCH humility) that the perceived
advantages of SAS with regards to data manipulation may be due in part to
some users only using R/Splus for stat modeling and graphics (thus never
becoming familiar with the data manipulation capabilities of R/Splus) or to
the reluctance of SAS-trained individuals and companies to make the
complete switch?

Tony, the story about the "famous software" and the "certain operating
system" at the "large company" was priceless.

In closing, I should mention that in all posts I am speaking for myself and
not for Edwards LifeSciences.

Regards,
    -Cody