At one point, I was almost ready to jump the SAS ship to R myself because I was very unhappy with the SAS graphical capabilities (clumsy to execute, and export quality to Powerpoint terrible). For someone like me who does a lot of non-clinical data-mining, graphical analysis and visualization are essential.

Susie C. Y. Li

-----Original Message----- From: SAS(r) Discussion [mailto:SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Toby Dunn Sent: Wednesday, January 07, 2009 12:00 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: R "Threatens" SAS, According to The New York Times

Ken ,

Well they shouldnt intice David and I to start up again, David and I can ensure we add 2 to 4 thousand more posts to the list serve a year. At SESUG David and I were remembering and laughing about the years when he and I constituted about 25 to 30% of the SAS-L traffic. Ahh the good ol days before I had to manage a buinch of programmers, do my own programming jobs, and also be a Unix and SAS Admin all at the same time.

Toby Dunn

On Wed, 7 Jan 2009 08:43:44 -0500, Ken Borowiak <evilpettingzoo97@AOL.COM> wrote:

>On Tue, 6 Jan 2009 20:41:40 -0800, Virtual SUG <sfbay0001@AOL.COM> wrote: > >>Hello everyone... >> >>Thought you might be interested in reading this article, which appears >>in the 1/6/9 online edition of The New York Times: >> >>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/technology/business- >computing/07program.html >> >>The headline is "Data Analysts Captivated by R's Power," and towards >>the end of the story is the following paragraph: >> >>"While it is difficult to calculate exactly how many people use R, >>those most familiar with the software estimate that close to 250,000 >>people work with it regularly. The popularity of R at universities >>could threaten SAS Institute, the privately held business software >>company that specializes in data analysis software. SAS, with more >>than $2 billion in annual revenue, has been the preferred tool of >>scholars and corporate managers. " >> >>Andrew Karp >>Sierra Information Services >>www.SierraInfomation.com > > >Even David and Toby were implicitly mentioned in the article: > >“R has really become the second language for people coming out of grad >school now, and there’s an amazing amount of code being written for it,” >said Max Kuhn, associate director of nonclinical statistics at Pfizer. “You >can look on the SAS message boards and see there is a proportional downturn >in traffic.” > >pax, >Ken Borowiak