[R] [Summary] Problems for 13 year old

[Frank E Harrell Jr]

That sounds like a great plan and thanks for the well done summary.

One other thought.  All students need to write reports.  Learning LaTeX at this stage would give them a real efficiency tool.  In working with my 10 year old daughter the other night on OpenOffice, it was really easy to insert pictures from the Internet.  But basic stuff takes so much longer.  OpenOffice, like MS Office, kept changing fonts on her, for example, and we had to keep changing them back.  Sectioning was also more time-consuming than just typing \section{name}.

LaTeX can also teach programming:

\def\smallreport{1}
\def\textonly{0}

\ifnum\smallreport=0
  Stuff to include for large report only.
  ...
\fi

\ifnum\textonly=0
 \includegraphics{ } ...
\fi

I haven't tried this on kids yet but hope to soon.  I may also investigate lyx or possibly texmacs (Linux/Unix only) for introducing LaTeX.

Frank Harrell


On Sat, 01 Feb 2003 00:25:54 -0500
ggrothendieck at yifan.net wrote:
....
-- 
Frank E Harrell Jr              Prof. of Biostatistics & Statistics
Div. of Biostatistics & Epidem. Dept. of Health Evaluation Sciences
U. Virginia School of Medicine  http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat