[R] Factor Analysis?

[Zdenek Skala]

Maria Wolters wrote:
> I actually think it's an advantage of R that it discourages the innocent
> click'n'play approach fostered by GUI-based systems. In fact, using R has
> shown me (personally) how statistically illiterate I still am, and made me
> much more aware of many use and misuse issues. 

Agree completely. I am a "simple user" of R, so unfortunately 
unable to write new library and feel, of course, that it is harder to 
write one than to require it... I would only argue in favor of factor 
analysis in general, not to exclude it principally from the future R 
development: (1) it is, in my opinion, not only for social sciences - 
in "biostatistics" (and especially morphometrics) I feel high 
potential for use of factor analysis; (2) at the same time, life 
scientists are often using S(plus)/R - so the audience is prepared; 
(3) my understanding of factor analysis is that it does not differ 
from PCA primarily by rotation but by searching for structure within 
a (partial) correlation matrix, not within a covariance matrix. As 
such it *is*, in my opinion, intellectually attractive and not only 
useful for practitioners.
Best
Zdenek Skala
++++++++++++++++++++++
] Zdenek Skala
] e-mail:
] Zdenek.Skala at incoma.cz

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