ReproducibleResearch.org, a comprehensive repository for information and resources related to reproducible research, recently listed Inference as a tool for creating reproducible documents and publications.  The reproducible research movement has its roots in the principle that all the information (data, code) relevant to a work of research should be made available for others to evaluate and verify.  Reproducible research limits the loss of critical information, makes data auditable, enables deeper learning, and provides a springboard for future scientific exploration.

This “pay it forward” approach to research, although simple in concept, has met with some resistance in implementation.  Traditionally, tools used for implementation have been limited to specific platforms and domains.  Inference helps to break this barrier by enabling reproducibility across a wide range of technical platforms (R, MATLAB, .NET), through a ubiquitous document format (Word and Excel).

To quote directly from the ReproducibleResearch.org blog:

“The number of people who use C# and Microsoft Word is orders of magnitude larger than the number of folks who use R and LaTeX. It looks like Blue Reference’s product Inference for .NET lets .NET programmers do the kinds of things Sweave lets R programmers do, embedding .NET code in Microsoft Office documents. They also make a product Inference for MATLAB for embedding MATLAB code in Office documents. Python developers who don’t think of themselves as .NET developers might want to use Inference for .NET to embed Python code in Word documents via Iron Python. Ruby developers might want to use Iron Ruby similarly.”