[R] Teaching R - In front of the computer?

[Robin Hankin]

Hi

the only way I have ever made this work is to have an R
session projected on the screen, and each student to
have their own machine on which they can try out
what I type.

You can then set the students questions to force them
to play around with R syntax.  A good one is to put
up a graph that you have prepared beforehand, and
say "reproduce this".

Just be careful with ad-hoc playing around, in a live public
session.  I got badly bitten by this:

f <- function(x){(x*x -1) - (x-1)*(x+1) }
f(100000:100010)


[everything behaving as documented, but embarrassingly
unexpected!]

best

Robin







On 19 Sep 2005, at 14:25, Rau, Roland wrote:

> Dear R-Users,
>
> given you have been teaching R to students (grad level, mainly social
> science background, no previous programming experience, 80% know  
> SPSS),
> what are your experiences concerning the style of teaching? Do you
> prefer to stand in front of the class like in "normal" lectures and  
> you
> show them slides? Or do you you explain some concept (for example  
> things
> like mydata[order(var1, var2),]) and show it directly on the computer
> via beamer/projector and also the students have to enter it on the
> computers in front of them.
>
> Any experiences you can share are highly appreciated.
>
> Thanks,
> Roland
>
> +++++
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--
Robin Hankin
Uncertainty Analyst
National Oceanography Centre, Southampton
European Way, Southampton SO14 3ZH, UK
  tel  023-8059-7743