Thanks! (Was: Re: [R] R-2.1.0 is released)

[Paulo Justiniano Ribeiro Jr]

Adding a few more lines to this...

> >>>Don't forget that universities have to train their students with the
> >>>softwares companies are using.
> >

What do they use?
This may change among companies and countries.
If we go for the majority we would probably end up teaching
only Excel - and F. Harrell would be desperate :) --

In some contries like Brazil, a software like R is doing a real
revolution in practice and teaching of statistics.
Access to modern statistical methods are readily accessible as they
have never been before.

Several year of teaching based on commercial software have produced
negligible results compared with what are are achieving now.
This discussion reminds me a quote from Box, Hunter and Hunter book
(may not be perfectly reproduced below):

"More important than teaching statistical methods is to teach the
statistical thinking"

best
P.J.

Paulo Justiniano Ribeiro Jr
LEG (Laboratório de Estatística e Geoinformação)
Departamento de Estatística
Universidade Federal do Paraná
Caixa Postal 19.081
CEP 81.531-990
Curitiba, PR  -  Brasil
Tel: (+55) 41 361 3573
Fax: (+55) 41 361 3141
e-mail: paulojus at est.ufpr.br
http://www.est.ufpr.br/~paulojus