[R] Book recommendation for newbie to stats and R?

[Ben Fairbank]

Kevin --

There are at least two that I recommend:
	Using R for Introductory Statistics, John Verzani, published by
Chapman & Hall, 2005, and Introductory Statistics with R, by Peter
Dalgaard (a frequent contributor to this list)published by Springer (in
paperback) 2002.  Of these, IMHO you will find more basic, fundamental,
ground level stat in Verzani (which is also longer by about 40%), but
more elegant, insightful use of R and more creative ideas in Dalgaard.
These two together with the R Introduction that comes with R and maybe
Jon Baron's notes on the use of R in psychology will get you off on the
right foot.  Good luck!

Ben Fairbank




-----Original Message-----
From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch
[mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Zembower, Kevin
Sent: Tuesday, October 17, 2006 9:08 AM
To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
Subject: [R] Book recommendation for newbie to stats and R?

I'm trying to learn statistics and R at the same time. I have an
undergraduate science degree and one year of calculus (30 years ago),
but never took a stats course. I hope to take some stats courses in the
next year, but thought I would start to see how much I could teach
myself.

I work for an organization that analyses behavior change communication
programs regarding HIV/AIDS and reproductive health. A typical question
we're trying to answer is, "Watching which television programs in South
Africa is related to an increased use of condoms?" All of our work is in
the social sciences, I'd say. I'd like to help analyze our data using R.

I found these titles that may teach me both stats and R:
--Data Analysis and Graphics Using R by John Maindonald, John Braun
--Introductory Statistics with R by Peter Dalgaard
--Statistics: An Introduction using R by Michael J. Crawley
--Using R for Introductory Statistics by John Verzani

I recognize some of the authors by their postings here.

Can anyone recommend any of these books over the others? I'm interested
in a book that I can learn statistics by reading the chapters and
working out the exercises and problems, therefore having access to many
or all of the problem solutions is important.

Do you have any other recommendations for me in learning both R and
stats? Is it an impossible quest to learn enough stats by myself to be
useful in analyzing real data sets?

Thanks so much for your advice and suggestions.

Kevin Zembower
Center for Communication Programs
Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins University
www.jhuccp.org

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