Closing the Gap between Methodologists and End-Users: R as a Computational Back-End

The R environment provides a natural platform for developing new statistical methods due to the mathematical expressiveness of the language, the large number of existing libraries, and the active developer community. One drawback to R, however, is the learning curve; programming is a deterrent to non-technical users, who typically prefer graphical user interfaces (GUIs) to command line environments. Thus, while statisticians develop new methods in R, practitioners are often behind in terms of the statistical techniques they use as they rely on GUI applications. Meta-analysis is an instructive example; cutting-edge meta-analysis methods are often ignored by the overwhelming majority of practitioners, in part…