[R] Problems for 13 year old

[Jonathan Baron]

OK, I lost the original post.  Sorry.  But here is my 2 cents.
One approach to getting a 13-year-old (or 31-year-old) interested
in R is to get him going on what R is good at, data analysis,
with and without graphics.

The data could come from whatever is already of interest, whether
it is weather, sports, movies, or politics. There are interesting
questions all over the place.  And data are easier and easier to
get from the web.

For example, at the time of the U.S. Presidential Election of
2000, people went wild analyzing data from Palm Beach County and
other Florida counties.  Some were real statisticians, and came
to real conclusions, but some where amatuers.
(See the top of http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron/policy.html
for a few links, mostly outdated.)

As a tennis fan, I'd love to see someone figure out a better way
to do the rankings than the system now used.  (You can make
progress on this without getting into the full depth of the
problem.)

Now you can't just sit someone down and say "go to it."  You do
have to get him started on it, but, somehow, not do it all
yourself.  That's the trick.

--
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page:            http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron
R page:               http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/