From: "Kwanghui Lim" To: "robert gentleman" ; "R core team" ; "Ross Lhaka" Cc: "Eric von Hippel" Subject: phone interview? Date: Sunday, December 09, 2001 8:18 AM Dear Robert, Prof Eric Von Hippel and I at the MIT Sloan School are at the initial stages of an academic study of user-built toolkits. The central question we are asking is whether these are inherently better than manufacturer-built ones. As part of this study, we became very interested in your R project. Would you mind spending a few minutes with us on a telephone interview? We hope to discuss: * Why did you create "R" * In what way is "R" better than solutions created by companies like Stata, SPSS?? In what way is it not? * Will a project like "R" drive Stata/SPSS/SAS out of business? Why or why not? Discussing these issues with several members of the R core team members would be really helpful to us (and we would be more than delighted to keep you updated on what we learn as our study evolves) We hope the founders and several members of the R core team would be kind enough to spare around half an hour each to discuss these issues over the telephone. If so, please provide us with: * your phone number * a suitable date/time to call you (local time at your location) * your city or time zone. Further information about us is available at http://kwanghui.net and http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/index.html. Best regards, .kwang. ps: keep up the great work with R. it is a fantastic piece of software. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Kwanghui Lim Assistant Professor, NUS Business School, FBA2-03-10, S. 117591, SINGAPORE. Tel: (65)874-1342, Fax:(65)779-2621 Visiting Assistant Professor, MIT Sloan School (Sep-Dec2001) 50 Memorial Drive, E52-545, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA. Tel: (1)617-253-0594 Email: k@kwanghui.net Web: http://kwanghui.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------