[R] A comment about R:

[Ruben Roa]

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch [SMTP:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of David Forrest
> Sent:	Tuesday, January 03, 2006 6:16 PM
> To:	Gabor Grothendieck
> Cc:	Thomas Lumley; R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch; Patrick Burns; Peter Dalgaard
> Subject:	Re: [R] A comment about R:
> 
> On Tue, 3 Jan 2006, Gabor Grothendieck wrote:
> ...
> > In fact there are some things that are very easy
> > to do in Stata and can be done in R but only with more difficulty.
> > For example, consider this introductory session in Stata:
> >
> > http://www.stata.com/capabilities/session.html
> >
> > Looking at the first few queries,
> > see how easy it is to take the top few in Stata whereas in R one would
> > have a complex use of order.  Its not hard in R to write a function
> > that would make it just as easy but its not available off the top
> > of one's head though RSiteSearch("sort.data.frame") will find one
> > if one knew what to search for.
> 
> This sort of thing points to an opportunity for documentation.  Building a
> tutorial session in R on how one would do a similar analysis would provide
> another method of learning R.  "An Introduction to R" is a good bottom-up
> introduction, which if you work through it does teach you how to do
> several things.  Adapting other tutorials or extended problems, like the
> Stata session, to R would give additional entry points.  A few end-to-end
> tutorials on some interesting analyses would be helpful.
> 
> Any volunteers?
> 
> Dave
> -- 
>  Dr. David Forrest
>  drf at vims.edu                                    (804)684-7900w
>  drf5n at maplepark.com                             (804)642-0662h
>                                    http://maplepark.com/~drf5n/
> 
--------
I am not volunteering but i would like to point out that Paulo Ribeiro's illustrative session
on package geoR and Ole Christensen's similar document for geoRglm are, IMO,
excellent examples on how to make things easier for beginners.
Ruben