I posted some notes this evening on working with probability distributions in Mathematica and R/S-PLUS.
I much prefer Mathematica’s syntax. The first time I had to read some R code I ran across a statement something like runif(1, 3, 4). I thought it was some sort of conditional executation statement: run something if some condition holds. No, the code generates a random value uniformly from the interval (3, 4). The corresponding Mathematica syntax is Random[ UniformDistribution[3,4] ].
Another example. The statement pnorm(x, m, s) in R corresponds to PDF[ NormalDistribution[m, s], x ] in Mathematica. Both evaluate the PDF of a normal random variable with mean m and standard deviation s at the point x.
It’s a matter of taste. Some people prefer terse notation, especially for things they use frequently. I’d rather type more and remember less.
{ 0 comments… add one now }