[R] Statistical computing

[david.whiting@ncl.ac.uk]

On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 12:43:25PM -0500, Frank E Harrell Jr wrote:
> On Fri, 28 Mar 2003 11:42:18 -0500
> Tanya Murphy <tmurph6 at po-box.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> 
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I've been trying to familiarize myself with the computing tools of the trade 
> > (e.g. SAS, R, Perl, LaTex) and I've been getting somewhere with the individual 
> > programs, but I'm trying to get a better sense of how to integrate these 
> > tools. I'd like to use scripts and create reports in a more organized way. Can 
> > anyone recommend books or, better yet free online articles, on this topic? 
> > Maybe I should be a little more specific about what I do: I'm a research 
> > assistant in clinical epidemiology doing mainly data management and analysis. 
> > I do a number of repetitive tasks like updating a research database from the 
> > original clinic database and other sources, create reports, create graphical 
> > output for individual patients, as well as work on individual research 
> > projects. Unfortunately I am not working closely with 'real' statisticians who 
> > have probably developped good work habits using these tools. Any advice on 
> > 'the big picture' would be greatly appreciated.
> > 
> > Thanks!
> > 
> > Tanya Murphy
> >
> 
> Take a look at the following:
> 
> http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/teaching/statcomp/notes.pdf
> http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/s/doc/splus.pdf
> http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/teaching/statcomp
> http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/presentations/feh/clinreport/dmcreport.pdf
> 
> For statistical reports you have chosen well, in considering intergrating R and LaTeX.  The Alzola-Harrell text also covers a bit about using make and Perl to run scripts (to get data from SAS to R, run R, etc.).

I have been extremely impressed by the way sweave (combines LaTeX and
R), and RODBC (in my case with MySQL) work together for data
management, reporting, writing stuff and even creating presentations.
I use a LaTeX document class called 'Prosper" that creates PDF
presentations with many of the features and appearance of MS
Powerpoint presentations.

For Sweave, take look at:
http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~leisch/Sweave/Sweave-manual-20021007.pdf
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/Rnews_2002-3.pdf (pages 28-31)

For Prosper take a look at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/prosper/
and then google for: latex prosper 
and you will find many links to tutorials etc. 


Dave


-- 
Dave Whiting
Dar es Salaam, Tanzania