Assignment 3: Getting to know Rmarkdown

Safiya

Sociology 333

Professor Turner

09/21/2018

Assignment 3: Getting Started with R Markdowns

The assignment given was to find differences between and The articles used to find such differences were:-

• • Excel vs. R: A Brief Introduction to R by* Jesse Sadler first argument
• • R vs. Excel for Data Analysis by* Chris Leonard second argument
• • 5 Comparisons Between R and Excel- Level Blog by* Alex Landa third argument

The findings are documented below and this entire paper was written in R Markdown in R Studio

1. In terms of R and Excel, Excel is more user friendly with a straightforward learning curve, mainly due to the simplicity of pointing and clicking.

2. On the other end of the spectrum, R is better for using large datasets as it has more advanced features. Data analysis and visualization comes easier for R because it can produce superb graphics and one can easily follow the steps to reproduce an analysis by saving the codes.

3. R is also quite useful in importing data from other sources such as CSV, SQL and Python etc. making it very versatile and appealing.

4. R is also good for regression tables, data munging and classification etc.

5. R is open sourced, meaning, it can be downloaded for free via the internet unlike that of Excel (approximately $100/yr. for Office Suite.)

6. When it comes to the industry of Data Analytics, R surpasses Excel because of the potential to earn more on the job.

7. Due to the steep learning curve R is more in demand than Excel. Most markets expect H.S and college graudates to have some knowledge of Excel.

8. Lastly, with R, when manipulating datasets there’s no need to worry that erros errors will tamper with your original dataset causing it to change should you make a mistake along the way because you have the option of creating a subset for mainpulation.

CONCLUSION

It was difficult finding many pros for Excel. However, this does not mean that Excel is on its way to extinction or a completely ineffective program. In fact, Excel is still a wildly used program for those mainly in high school and college as it is part of the Office Suite that also contains Word, PowerPoint and Access. Those that are in high school or college may not need to analyze data as someone in Graduate school or the Science industry, hence, it depends on what needs to get done and the results we need that determines the usefulness of either R or Excel.