R vs. Python: Key Differences | The Datalore Blog (2024)

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R vs. Python: Key Differences | The Datalore Blog (1)

Alena Guzharina

Let’s understand the nature of R and Python! We’ll examine their purpose, features, and use cases. Read on to learn how to choose the right tool for your needs.

What Are Python and R?

Python and R are both open-source programming languages.

While Python has a more general purpose, R was created for specific tasks in statistical data analysis (for example, academic purposes). R and its packages provide you with enormous data visualization capabilities – your imagination is the only limit.

Python is by far the more popular language. According to JetBrains research on 10 million Jupyter Notebooks available publicly on Github in 2020, 8.9 million of the notebooks were written in Python, and only 77,000 were written in R.

R vs. Python: Key Differences | The Datalore Blog (2)

Python and R: Key Differences

Here are some areas where R and Python have little in common.

Programming Style

Python is a dynamic, interpreted language (with no need for compiling), which enables easy coding and on-the-fly syntax checking. Python is a wrapper on C++, which is why it’s slower than other programming languages such as C++ itself, Golang, and others. Because of Global Interpreter Lock (GIL), there is a limitation on parallel programming without using any specific libraries. Python is more convenient for data analysis and prototyping for machine learning and data science. Python is also easy to read and master, while R has statistics-specific syntax.

R is a language for scientific programming, data analysis, and business analytics. Also, R supports many ways of visualizing data with numerous customization possibilities. R also supports a lot of statistical modeling tools such as modelr, Hmisc, and others.

R can’t be used in production code because of its focus on research, while Python, a general-purpose language, can be used both for prototyping and as a product itself. Python also runs faster than R, despite its GIL problems.

Data Visualization

Data visualization is a necessary step in reporting data analysis. R is well-prepared for visualizing data as graphs, and there are thousands of libraries for data visualization. Python doesn’t have many libraries for presenting data, but it’s still very efficient and convenient for data analysis tasks themselves. The most popular R libraries for data visualization are ggplot2, lattice, and dygraphs. The most popular visualization libraries for Python are matplotlib, seaborn, and plotly.

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Libraries

R supports more than 12,000 data analysis libraries, which is why R is the first choice for data analysis tasks. Many of these libraries can also help you prepare the data analysis results in an easy and aesthetic way. Python also has an enormous number of data analysis libraries, but Python supports production libraries as well, enabling users to build apps.

What to Choose

Choosing the most suitable programming language – Python or R – really depends on your requirements. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Data Science

Both Python and R let you conduct data analysis and make predictions for data science tasks. However, if you plan to do research with reports, present your work results as applications, and use it in production, Python is a better choice. It is more convenient to create and train your models in Python libraries like pytorch and tensorflow. For R, there are a lot of libraries for ML, such as Mlr and Caret, so you can try them for prototyping models as well.

Research

If you need to conduct research, the choice is arguable. Python provides you with handy libraries for exploratory data analysis, such as pandas, and visualization can be done with plotly. However, it is useful only for general-purpose analysis. If you want to conduct statistical analysis with full reports, it is better to try R with its specific libraries, like as dplyr or esquisse.

The Datalore team was inspired by the way R data analysis packages work and implemented out-of-the box statistics for Python datasets as well. Take a look at how you can get descriptive statistics with just one click!

R vs. Python: Key Differences | The Datalore Blog (4)

Analyze Data in Datalore

Prototyping

As we mentioned before, R is more suitable for data analysis and is comprehensive for checking hypotheses and modeling. However, if you want to make a machine-learning model and try to observe how it works in your app, Python is the right choice. To create a simple app, these web-based frameworks can be used: django, flask, or fastapi.

If you are just starting out in programming, Datalore can help you build apps from Python and R notebooks with a few clicks using the Report builder.

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Open a data app example

Conclusion

In this article, we introduced two popular programming languages for data analysis: Python and R. It looks like R is better for scientific and statistical programming, while Python is more suitable for wrapping your data analysis into production. In Datalore you can use both programming languages and it is easy to get started for free online with the Community plan.

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R vs. Python: Key Differences | The Datalore Blog (2024)

FAQs

R vs. Python: Key Differences | The Datalore Blog? ›

Python is more convenient for data analysis and prototyping for machine learning and data science. Python is also easy to read and master, while R has statistics-specific syntax. R is a language for scientific programming, data analysis, and business analytics.

What are the key differences between R and Python? ›

Python is a general-purpose programming language, while R is a statistical programming language. This means that Python is more versatile and can be used for a wider range of tasks, such as web development, data manipulation, and machine learning.

What is better for data analysis, Python or R? ›

If you're passionate about the statistical calculation and data visualization portions of data analysis, R could be a good fit for you. If, on the other hand, you're interested in becoming a data scientist and working with big data, artificial intelligence, and deep learning algorithms, Python would be the better fit.

What is the difference between Python and R data structures? ›

Like Python, R has a robust community, but with a specialized focus on analysis. R doesn't offer general-purpose software development like Python, but it handles these specialized data science projects better because that's the only focus. The R ecosystem includes: RStudio (an R-based IDE)

What are the advantages of R over Python? ›

On the other hand, R is purely for statistics and data analysis, with graphs that are nicer and more customizable than those in Python. R uses the Grammar of Graphics approach to visualizing data in its #ggPlot2 library and this provides a great deal of intuitive customizability which Python lacks.

Can Python do everything R can? ›

R can't be used in production code because of its focus on research, while Python, a general-purpose language, can be used both for prototyping and as a product itself. Python also runs faster than R, despite its GIL problems.

What is the difference between Python and R functional programming? ›

R was specifically created for statistical analysis, and it excels at it. On the other hand, Python is a general-purpose language for creating applications. Both programming languages provide a diverse range of libraries and packages; in certain cases, cross-library support is also available.

Is R or Python better for data scraping? ›

Is R better than Python? Data analysts who need to process large data sets and visualize them with attractive graphics would prefer R over Python. Junior developers who require basic web scraping, data processing, and scalability prefer Python.

Should I learn R if I know Python? ›

Whether or not to learn R depends on your career goals: General data science: Python is sufficient, but R knowledge can be a bonus for specific roles. Specialized areas like bioinformatics: R proficiency might be essential.

What is the best programming language for data analysis? ›

Key Takeaways
  • Python, SQL, R, JavaScript, and Scala are five of the most popular programming languages for Data Analysts in 2021.
  • Python is known for its easy-to-use syntax and extensive libraries, making it ideal for tasks such as data collection, analysis, modeling, and visualization.
May 15, 2024

Why is Python used more than R? ›

Increases efficiency: Python's codes offer excellent control and integrations with other programming languages. This makes it so programmers won't have to rewrite code in some circ*mstances. Faster: Python renders data much faster than R because it runs using a simple syntax (which also makes it easy to read).

What is the difference between data frame in Python and R? ›

The only real difference is that in Python, we need to import the pandas library to get access to Dataframes. In R, while we could import the data using the base R function read. csv() , using the readr library function read_csv() has the advantage of greater speed and consistent interpretation of data types.

Is R or Python better for finance? ›

R: R is mostly used by data scientists as it is used only for data analysis. But compared to Python, it has been outraced. As finance involves the calculation and analysis of data R would be best for you. Python: Python is being used in almost all industries for data science, machine learning, and developing.

What is one advantage R has over Python? ›

Python might not be as specialized for statistics and data analysis as R. Some statistical functions and visualization capabilities might be more streamlined in R.

Should I switch to Python from R? ›

If you're doing machine learning, Python is still light-years ahead of R. If you're working with software engineers, they're going to be much happier working with you if you use Python. If you're looking for a job, you're going to be much more employable if you're already comfortable with Python.

Why is R so much slower than Python? ›

R is a low-level language, which means longer codes and more time for processing. Python being a high-level language renders data at a much higher speed. So, when it comes to speed - there is no beating Python.

What is the difference between R and N Python? ›

The newline character is represented by “\n” & it is used to create a new line in the string or file. The carriage return character represented by “\r” moves the cursor to the beginning of the current line without advancing to the next line.

How does R differ from other programming languages? ›

R is an open-source programming language that is best for statistical analysis and showing how data looks. In fact, it has a large ecosystem with complex data models and elegant tools for reporting data.

What is the difference between R and R+ Python? ›

About r and r+

The pointer of r points to the start/beginning of the file, and this mode opens the files in read-only mode. It throws an Input/Output error if the file is not present. Read and Write, or r+ mode, is an extension to read mode. Read and write mode opens the file for both reading and writing.

What is the difference between Python library and R package? ›

For web development, the Python requests library lets you easily grab data from the web for building datasets. In contrast, R is designed for data analysts to import data from Excel, CSV and text files. Files built in Minitab or in SPSS format can also be turned into R dataframes.

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