[tylermw]

R’s data visualization capabilities are heads and shoulders above Matlab’s, and it’s free and open source.

[jhbadger]

Yes, once you understand the idea of a "grammar of graphics", ggplot is really the best and most flexible plotting system available. There's a reason that people have tried to clone it (with varying degrees of success) as libraries for python and Julia.

[dagw]

For what it's worth there is a "grammar of graphics" library for Matlab as well, called gramm

[7thaccount]

Can you zoom in and out on the R plots? I've used ggplot2 and it didn't seem heads and shoulders above any of the other major tools (Matplotlib and the other Python plotting libraries or Matlab) and was way behind what you can do with .NET.

[IshKebab]

For publication, sure. For research, no chance.

[tylermw]

I see no distinction there.