Re: Statistics on octave - Comparison with R

[Dirk Eddelbuettel]

Pierre-Andre,

On Fri, Nov 16, 2001 at 06:58:52PM +0000, Pierre-Andre Cornillon wrote:
> For instance I have done the test (see in proceeding DSC 2001, J.W. Eaton)
> tic (); x=[1:100000];total=0; for i=1:100000
> total=total+x(i);endfor;toc()
> (or the same with cpu_time)
> 
> and (under R)
> system.time{x_1:100000;total_0;for(i in 1:100000) total_total+x[i]}
> 
> R was two times faster.

I have a review in Journal of Applied Econometrics [ a copy is / was on 
octave's web pages; if not I can email it to you ] which looks at Octave
from an Econometrician's point of view. It also has a little speed
comparison with R and Matlab using a small Monte Carlo example.

> May be some advanced user have something to answer (I know that R
> use static allocation of memory but is it an disadvantage for a
> basic user ?)

AFAIK it doesn't any more since R 1.2.0.

In general, it depends. I used to do more work in Octave, I currently tend
to do more work in R, but it is somewhat driven by what the questions are
you are trying to investigate.  I find R and Octave to be more complementary
than substitutes.

Regards,  Dirk


-- 
Better to have an approximate answer to the right question 
than a precise answer to the wrong question. -- John Tukey



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