Data Analysis with R, Second Edition - Second Edition

Why didn't we just do that in SQL?

Why, indeed. Although this very simple example could have easily just been written into the logic of the SQL query, for more complicated data analysis this simply won't cut it. Unless you are using a really specialized database, many databases aren't prepared for certain mathematical functions with regards to numerical accuracy. More importantly, most databases don't implement advanced math functions at all. Even if they did, they almost certainly wouldn't be portable between different RDBMSs. There is great merit in having analytics logic reside in R so that if, for whatever reason, you have to switch databases, your analysis code will remain unchanged.

If SQL is your cup of tea, did you know you can use ...