R tops KDNuggets data analysis software poll for 4th consecutive year

KDNuggests asked its readers the question "What programming/statistics languages you used for an analytics / data mining / data science work in 2014?" and one again, R was the #1 response. (R was also the #1 response in similar polls in 2013, 2012 and 2011.) The top 5 selections of the 719 respondents were:

1. R (352 respondents)
2. SAS (262)
3. Python (252)
4. SQL (220)
5. Java (89)

Respondents were able to select multiple languages, which is why the totals add up to more than the number of respondents. In fact, the analysis of data science software used together is quite interesting. Looking at the top 3, there's quite a bit of overlap between users of Python and R, but little crossover amongst SAS users. 

R has also ranked highly in a number of other polls and surveys, which you can see in our R popularity tag. For the complete results and further analysis of this KDNuggets poll, follow the link below.

KDNuggets Polls: Languages for analytics / data mining / data science 

Comments

[Robert Young]

As to the lack of overlap betwixt SAS and others: for ages SAS Institute has promoted SAS application as a "complete" database, stat processing, and programming environment. Clearly, that meme has worked.

For mainframe SAS users, access to python, or any language, may well be limited: "About a quarter of SAS's revenue comes from copies of its software installed on IBM mainframe computers." here: http://tinyurl.com/ykx75rx