[R] two questions for R beginners

[Kingsford Jones]

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 8:00 AM, Robert Baer <rbaer at atsu.edu> wrote:
[...]
> The things that led from "frustration" to "independence" was understanding
> the difference between data types like matrix and dataframe and learning
> there were commands to tell what you were working with at any given time.
> Did the data read in as character, numeric, or factor, etc.  Commands
> like: str, class, mode, ls, search, help, help.search, etc can help you
> figure out what you are doing.

Yes!  I think this is really key.  When I started R I had no
programming experience and thought of projects in terms of statistical
procedures and printed output (cut teeth w/ Minitab --> SPSS --> SAS).
 If I wanted to analyze data using R I looked for examples of using an
analysis function of interest (e.g, lm, princomp, rpart...) and did my
best to adapt to my project.  What was of interest was the printed
output rather than understanding the objects that I was passing and
creating. It wasn't until I buckled down and read the (admittedly
quite dry and often dense) materials describing the language that the
sailing became smooth (or at least much more rapid and took me to more
interesting places).  Important resources I recall using were An
Introduction to R (which I avoided for about the first 6mo because of
language I wasn't yet familiar with), r-help archives, man pages, and
particularly the early chapters of MASS and S Programming by V&R.  But
I think the real 'a-ha' moments came by interactively exploring
objects within R.  This was vastly facilitated by the use of str and
indexing tools ([, [[, $, @).

A mantra for R beginners might be "In R we work with objects, and str
reveals their essence" ;-)

Kingsford Jones


>
> Rob
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
> On Behalf Of Patrick Burns
> Sent: Thursday, February 25, 2010 11:31 AM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] two questions for R beginners
>
> * What were your biggest misconceptions or
> stumbling blocks to getting up and running
> with R?
>
> * What documents helped you the most in this
> initial phase?
>
> I especially want to hear from people who are
> lazy and impatient.
>
> Feel free to write to me off-list.  Definitely
> write off-list if you are just confirming what
> has been said on-list.
>
> --
> Patrick Burns
> pburns at pburns.seanet.com
> http://www.burns-stat.com
> (home of 'The R Inferno' and 'A Guide for the Unwilling S User')
>
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> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>