R-beta: Teach material for R
Thomas Lumley
thomas at biostat.washington.edu
Thu Mar 26 18:12:49 CET 1998
On Thu, 26 Mar 1998, Martin Maechler wrote:
> >>>>> "Kenneth" == Kenneth Nordstrom <nordstro at noppa.helsinki.fi> writes:
>
> Kenneth> Howdy! I'm a newbie in R, but have nevertheless gone out on a
> Kenneth> limb and used R this spring for teaching our stats students
> Kenneth> "modern data-analysis". I've been using RNotes, but to get
> Kenneth> some more (statistical) meat on the bones, I've complemented
> Kenneth> it with material from Venables-Ripley. Most of the V-R stuff
> Kenneth> (that I've tried) seems to work out of the box.
>
> Kenneth> Q-1: Is this generally the case (except for obvious
> Kenneth> differences with S+ like 3-dim graphics)? If yes, why is it
> Kenneth> necessary to port MASS if you can source the files on their
> Kenneth> diskette? Anyone tried this, or used other material for
> Kenneth> teaching data-analysis with R a la V-R?
>
> You must have been that you didn't have problems with "MASS".
> Part of it certainly is because V&R use a very good S programming style.
Some other things involved in porting even when the S code is ok:
* C, and even more so FORTRAN, tends to need minor changes since R only
allows double precision (FORTRAN programmers often use REAL instead of
DOUBLE PRECISION, which is quite a bit faster on some computers (though
not x86s))
* The help pages need to be converted to R help format (we have a Perl
script for this)
* The directory structure for an R package is different.
These are all routine (unlike the occasional changes to the interpreted
code), but still need to be done to make a package (as distinct from a
code fragment) useful.
>
> Kenneth> Q-2: How does R compare with XploRe? The latter seems to have
> Kenneth> the advantage that more macros/functions are already written,
> Kenneth> it has a nice graphical user interface (a consideration when
> Kenneth> teaching) as well as 3-dim graphics (also dynamical). Has
> Kenneth> anyone compared these in terms of capabilities as programming
> Kenneth> languages? (Note that you can get XploRe for LINUX for free
> Kenneth> and without expiry date!)
>
One advantage of R for teaching purposes is its compatibility with
S(-PLUS), which is becoming very popular out there in the 'Real World',
particularly in biostatistics.
Thomas Lumley
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Uni of Washington : can be adequately explained by :
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