How do SAS, R and Python compare for Data Science

Let us see some parameters and rating. The information below is to choose the best one and I give a score to each of these 3 languages-

• Background

SAS- It has been the undisputed market leader in commercial analytics space. The Software offers a huge array of statistical functions has a good GUI for the people to learn quickly & provides technical support. It ends up being the most expensive option & always enriched with statistical functions.

Python-It is a multi-purpose, free & open source programming language and becomes very popular in Data Science due to its active community & Data Mining Libraries.

R-It is a free & open-source programming language used to perform advanced data analysis tasks. Because of its open-source nature, latest technology gets released quickly and it is a very cost-effective option.

SAS is being preferred by big corporations because they offered highly reputed customer service, which is why SAS has an advantage in the marketing companies & financial sectors, the cost is not the primary concern for selecting a tool.

R & Python are used by Startups and mid-sized firms. Telecom & tech companies require huge volumes of unstructured data to be analyzed. Hence Data Scientists use ML techniques for which Python & R are more suitable.

• Availability / Cost-

SAS is commercial software, it is expensive & still beyond reach for most of the professionals. It holds the highest market share in private organizations. R and Python are free software that can be downloaded by anyone.

• Ease of Learning

You don’t require prior knowledge to learn SAS, because it is easy to use GUI & makes it the easiest to learn of all the 3. To analyze data in Python you will use Data Mining Libraries such as Pandas, Numpy, & Scipy. The code you write in these libraries it looks similar to the code you write in R. Hence it is easier to learn Python for Data Science when you are already familiar with R.

• Job Scenario-

SAS is the market leader in available corporate jobs, most of the big organizations, still, work on SAS. R and Python are better options for startups & companies looking for cost efficiency, no. of jobs R and Python have been increased over the last few years.