Talk:S-PLUS

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Untitled[edit]

As-is, the article says virtually nothing -- at least to someone who expects an article on software to say something of the character of the software. Historical chronology does not do so in the least.

There are three points to be made.

Three Characteristics of the Software

Genesis was the William S. Cleveland Visualization Paradigm

While sounding like more history, not so! William S. Cleveland developed many new kinds of graphics. Additionally, William S. Cleveland used scientific studies of graphical perception to formulate principles of optimal graphics presentation. Both these efforts were developed at Bell Labs in a language called S. And these facts are the true genesis of the S-Plus product and give the substantive description of the character of the product. William S. Cleveland's two books "Elements of Graphing Data" and "Visualizing Data" are easily seen influences of even the most current S-Plus product. By "easily seen" what is meant is both the literal seeing of "Trellis Graphics" in S-Plus, but also those statistical quantities computations emphasized by William S. Cleveland in his "Visualizing Data" book.

Trellis Graphics -- THE Most Salient Feature of all of S-Plus

The content of this point was made above. But if one does not explicitly state that "the most salient feature of S-Plus is its 'Trellis Graphics' ", then one has not fulfilled one's duty in giving a proper characterization of the software.

S-Plus is Doubly Dichotomous Software

This somewhat cryptic comment is not editorial opinion, but objective fact (even reflected in the course offerings by Insightful Corporation). Decoding, here is what is meant. Dichotomy #1 is point-'n-click & dialog box user interfacing (commonly called GUI [graphical user interface], but not really that GUI here since dialog box'ing has such a huge role) -VERSUS- advanced S programming language program writing. Dichotomy #2 is William S. Cleveland Visualization Paradigm Advanced Graphics -VERSUS- advanced statistics (numerical) of the regression,parameter estimation,hypothesis testing,modeling statistical inference paradigm. With two dichotomies, combinatorics would say there should be 2 times 2 or 4 modes of using S-Plus. And by golly, this is totally true. One can do visualizations (graphics) via point/clik/dialogbox; one can do visualizations via writing S programs. One can do statistical (numeric) modeling by point/clik/dialogbox; one can do statistical (numeric) modeling by writing S programs. So all four modes/goals of using S-Plus exist. Courses given by Insightful Corporation can even be seen to target specific ones of the four mode-goal combinations.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 199.196.144.12 (talk) 23 April 2008

Current status[edit]

There's little info about S-Plus on the TIBCO web site. This makes me wonder, is S-Plus still being developed or supported? 75.163.201.188 (talk) 01:37, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]