Re: How good is R?

I broadly agree (I'm learning R too), but using a spread*** for
statistics is in my opinion very useful. In general I use Excel for
data management, transformation etc. I rarely use the built-in
functions, but sometimes run simple analyses (e.g., correlations and t
tests) in Excel. If you do this, don't rely on built-in functions too
much, check important results with another package such as R. In my
experience Excel can be superior to dedicated stats packages such as
SPSS for certain sitautions if you use it right.

A lot depends on the data sets you use. If you use small data sets with
values like "8.4" or "1389" Excel performs fine with simple functions.

Big data sets with values like "0.00000734896741" might be rather
dodgy.

Thom

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