[R] What parts of 'Statistical Models in S' are not applicable to R?

[Uwe Ligges]

Emmanuel Charpentier wrote:
> Le mercredi 11 novembre 2009 à 10:22 +0100, Uwe Ligges a écrit :
>> Peng Yu wrote:
>>> According to Amazon review, 'Statistical Models in S' is a key
>>> reference for understanding the methods implemented in several of
>>> S-PLUS' high-end statistical functions, including 'lm()', predict()',
>>> 'design()', 'aov()', 'glm()', 'gam()', 'loess()', 'tree()',
>>> 'burl.tree()', 'nls()' and 'ms()'.
>>>
>>> But since it is for S, some part of the book may not be applicable to
>>> R. Some examples (e.g. interaction.plot()) discussed in this book are
>>> not available in R. Without, working examples, it is sometimes
>>> difficult for me to understand the materials in the book.
>>>
>>> Besides the functions mentioned in the Amazon review, could somebody
>>> give me a hint on what chapters (or sections) in this book are not
>>> appropriate to R?
>>
>> They all are appropriate, but nuances differ these days, as some nuances 
>> differ for recent S-PLUS versions, 17 years later. It should still be 
>> fine to learn some relevant concepts.
> 
> You could also note that, at least in the 4th (last) edition of the
> book, the authors have marked passages with differences between R and S+
> with a marginal "R".

I guess you are talking about a very different book .....

Uwe Ligges



> Now this book has grow a bit out of date since its lst edition
> (2002 ?) : Newer R packages implements various things previously not
> implemented in R (e.g. multiple comparisons after ANOVA, previously
> available in S+ with the "multicomp" function, nd implemented (with a
> lot more generalizability) in the "multcomp" package).
>
> A 5th edition might be in order, but that would be a *daunting* task :
> The "language" R has grew (e. g. namespaces), the nature and extend of
> avilable tasks has grew *enormously*, and I don't think that producing a
> book that would be to 2009 R what V&R4 was to 2002 R is doable by a
> two-person team, as talented, dedicated and productive as these two
> persons might be (modulo Oxford sarcasm :-). Furthermore, these two
> persons already give an enormous amount of time and effort to other R
> development (search for R-help activity of BV and BDR, or meditate on
> the recently published stats on R source activity...).
> 
> Such a document would probably have to be something other than a book to
> stay up to date and accurate, and even coordinating such a task would
> need serious time... Even if it would exclude anything present in the
> vrious packages help files, and should limit to tutorial introductions,
> examples and discussions, the sheer volume (1700+ packages last time I
> looked) and the difficulty of coordination (how do you discuss 5
> different packages, implementing various means to solve the same
> problem ?) would involve serious organizational difficulties.
> 
> So I doubt such a document will get produced in the foreseeable future.
> Frequent R-help reading and note-taking is the second-best option...
> 
> To come back to R-vs-S+ topic : unless I'm mistaken, R seems to be
> currently the dominant version of the S language, and most published S
> material will nowadays (implicitly) be aimed at R. This should reduce
> the importance of the problem.
> 
> Sincerely,
> 
> 					Emmanuel Charpentier
> 
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