On Fri, 27 Aug 2010, Adam Morris wrote:

> I've also used proprietary products that I'm still desparately searching 
> for a good FOSS replacement for, but that is another discussion 
> altogether.

I know about that.  Right now I don't use Mathematica, or have much of a 
need for it, but I don't think anything out there can do what Mathematica 
does, not at that level, so I could still see myself using it or 
recommending it to my son, but I would proceed cautiously, always trying 
to use free software to do the same work whenever the free software could 
do it.


> I do have a counter-point for you though.  Many companies expect their 
> students to have even a little experience out of the classroom with 
> products such as SAS and SPSS.  Its frustrating, especially for someone 
> who is a strong advocate for FOSS such as you, myself, and many other 
> people on this list, but its a fact of life.

We know about that too.  That has been the main excuse for teaching SAS to 
the Master's students in biostat courses.  Things are changing quickly 
these days (like the NY Times articles suggest) and it won't be long 
before all they need to know about SAS is how to get data out of SAS and 
into R.  There will still be legacy code problems, I'm sure, so someone 
will have to know SAS and I wouldn't try to dissuade students from 
learning it, but I wouldn't make it a requirement for anyone's degree.


> On the flipside, its always good to know cheap alternatives, but I know 
> from personal experience that some companies equate free or low cost 
> with low quality.
>
> Simply put the mentality is frustrating but its very common in the 
> business world with large corporations.  Especially with something like 
> R which is better than most of the proprietary products out there (I use 
> it on a regular basis myself).

A company that wants to do well will find ways to work with R.  One great 
reason -- more good young stat people are going to want to use it.  Using 
it will improve their productivity.  That is one of the reasons why Linux 
has taken off.  It's not just the differences between Linux and Solaris, 
say, it's that more people know Linux and are comfortable working with it, 
so it's easier to hire a really good Linux sysadmin than one who does 
Solaris or HPUX or Irix or AIX.

Mike