[R] Pros and Cons of R

[Trevor Davis]

K. Elo wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Monica Pisica wrote:
>  > - There is no perfect “beginner” book.
> 
> How about
> - Crawley, Michael (2007). The R book, Wiley & Sons.
> - Maindonald, John & John Braun (2007): Data Analysis and Graphics Using 
> R (2nd edition), Cambridge University Press.
> 
> As a political scientist (with programming experience :) ), both books 
> have helped me to decide in favour of R instead of SPSS when I had to 
> choose the environment for statistical analysis (in Linux). Sadly 
> enough, almost all method books written for social scientists take SPSS 
> as the standard statistical application and, consequently, teach data 
> analysis in a look-for-this-in-SPSS-output-manner. To use R in social 
> sciences, one really must learn how R does things: looking for something 
> in the output is not enough :)
> 
> BTW, does someone happen to know, if there is any R-book written for 
> social scientists?
> 
> Kind regards,
> Kimmo
> 
Some of the "Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences" series of 
monographs by SAGE publications use R (such as "Spatial Regression 
Models") and there are a few Econometrics books out there (Econometrics 
in R by Grant Farnsworth is available for free in the contributed 
section of the CRAN website).