R Graphical User Interface Comparison RAMAKRISHNA REDDY B (MCA, MTECH) AVANTHI PG COLLEGE HYDERABADR Graphical User Interface Comparison Having completed several detailed reviews of Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) for R, let’s compare them. It’s not too difficult to rank them based on the number of features they offer, so let’s start there. I’m basing the counts on the number of dialog boxes in each category of four categories: 1. Ease of Use 2. General Usability 3. Graphics 4. AnalyticsSome software has fewer menu choices, depending instead on more detailed dialog boxes. Studying every menu and dialog box is very time-consuming. Figure 1 shows how the various GUIs compare on the average rank of the four categories. R Commander is abbreviated Rcmdr, and R AnalyticFlow is abbreviated RAF.Bluesky Reinstat Remdr JASP- g : : i 3 3 RKWard jamovi R Graphical Deducer Rattle RAF Mean Rankit mostly by how well each GUI does what GUI users are looking for: avoiding code. They get one point each for being able to install, start, and use the GUI to its maximum effect, including publication-quality output, without knowing anything about the R language itself. Figure 2 shows the result. JASP comes out on top here, with jamovi and BlueSky right behind.JASP- jamovi- B Bluesky r 3 z & Rlnstat: R Graphical User RAF Rattle- Deducer- Remdr- 25 50 Ease-of-Use Features 75 10.0. . Figure 3 shows the general usability features each GUI offers. This category is dominated by data-wrangling capabilities, where data scientists and statisticians spend most of their time. This category also includes various types of data input and output. BlueSky and R-Instat come out on top not just due to their excellent selection of data wrangling features but also due to their use of the rio package for importing and exporting files.* The rio package combines the import/export capabilities of many other packages, and it is easy to use. | expect the other GUls will eventually adopt it, raising their scores by around 40 points. JASP shows up at the bottom of this plot due to its philosophy of encouraging users to prepare the data elsewhere before importing it into JASP.BlueSky ‘R-Instat 3 RkWard gRKWe 5 Remdr > Rattle ical © Deducer Gray © iamovi- RAF JASP. 50 100 General Usability Features 150* When studying these graphs, it’s important to consider the difference between the relative and absolute performance. * For example, relatively speaking, JASP and R Commander are not doing well here, but they do offer over 25 types of plots! * That absolute figure might be fine for your needs.R Graphical User Interface R-Instat- BlueSky- Rattle Remdr- JASP- Deducer- RKWard Jjamovi- RAF ——__—_-e Oo 10 20 ‘Graphics 30 40Many important details are buried in these simple counts. For example, | enjoy using jamovi for statistical analyses, but it currently lacks machine learning and artificial intelligence. I like BlueSky too, but it doesn’t yet do any Bayesian statistics (j|amovi and JASP do). Rattle comes out near the bottom due to its focus on machine learning, but it does an excellent job of introducing students to that area.8 2 Remdr- BlueSky jamovi JASP. AnalyticsBlueSky Statistics — This software was created by former SPSS employees, and it shares many of SPSS’ features. BlueSky is only a few years old, and it converted from commercial to open source mid-way through 2018. Its developers have been adding features at a rapid rate. When using BlueSky, it’s not initially apparent that R is involved at all. Unless you click the code button “” included in every dialog box, you'll never see the R code. BlueSky saves the dialog settings for every step, providing GUI-based reproducibility. BlueSky’s output is in publication-quality tables which follow the popular style of the American Psychological Association. It’s stronger than most of the others in Al/ML and psychometrics. It is now available for Windows and Mac (previous versions were Windows-only). BlueSky is the only R GUI with a company supporting it, though that support is not free.Deducer — * This has a very nice-looking interface, and it’s probably the first R GUI to offer output in true APA-style word processing tables. * Being able to just cut and paste a table into your word processor saves a lot of time, and it’s a feature that has been copied by several others. * Deducer was released in 2008, and when | first saw it, | thought it would quickly gain developers. * It got a few, but development seems to have halted. * Deducer’s installation is quite complex, and it depends on the troublesome Java software. * It also uses JGR, which never became as popular as the similar RStudio. * The main developer, lan Fellows, has moved on to another interesting GUI project called Vivid.Jamovi * The developers who form the core of the jamovi project used to be part of the JASP team. * Even though they started a couple of years later, they’re ahead of JASP in several ways at the moment. * Its developers decided that the R code it used should be visible and any R code should be executable, features that differentiate it from JASP. * jamovi has an extremely interactive interface that immediately shows you the result of every selection in each dialog box (JASP does too). * It also saves the settings in every dialog box and lets you re- use every step on a new dataset by saving a “template.” That’s extremely useful since GUI users often prefer to avoid learning R code. * jamovi’s biggest weakness is its dearth of data management features, though there are plans to address that.JASP The biggest advantage JASP offers is its emphasis on Bayesian analysis. If that’s your preference, this might be the one for you. Another strength is JASP’s Machine Learning module. Currently, JASP is very different from all the other GUls reviewed here because it can’t show you the R code it’s writing. The development team plans to address that issue, but it has been planned for a couple of years now, so it must not be an easy thing to add.R AnalyticFlow This is unique among R GUIs as it is the only one that lets you organize your analyses using flowchart-like workflow diagrams. That approach makes it easy to visualize what a complex analysis is doing and to rerun it. It writes very clean base R code and provides easy access to the powerful lattice graphics package. It also supports the ggplot2 graphics package, but only through its more limited quickplot function. R AnalyticFlow also lets you extend its capability making it easier for R power users to interact with non-programmers. . .Rattle If your work involves ML/AI (a.k.a. data mining) instead of standard statistical methods, Rattle may be the GUI for you. It’s focused on ML/AI, and its tabbed-based interface makes quick work of it. However, it’s the weakest of them all regarding statistical analysis. It also lacks many standard data management features.RKWard This GUI blends a nice point-and-click interface with an integrated development environment (IDE) that is the most advanced of all the other GUIs reviewed here. It’s easy to install and start, and it saves all your dialog box settings, allowing you to rerun them. However, that’s done step-by-step, not all at once as jamovi’s templates allow. The code RKWard creates is classic R, with no tidyverse at all. RKWard is one of only three R GUls that support R Markdown (the others: BlueSky and jamovi). . .R-Instat This offers one of the most extensive collections of data wrangling, graphics, and statistical analysis methods of any R GUI. At a basic level, its graphics dialogs are easy to use, and it offers powerful multi-layer support for people who are familiar with the ggplot2 package’s geom functions. To use its full modeling capabilities, you need to know what R’s packages (e.g. MASS) are and what each one’s functions