[R] advice/opinion on " < -" vs " =" in teaching R

[Ben Bolker]

John Kane <jrkrideau <at> yahoo.ca> writes:

> 
> I've only been using R for about 2.5 years but and I'm not all that good  but
I vote for <- .
> 
> I think the deciding factor is in  RSiteSearch() and the various manuals.
> 
> Almost everything I see uses <- .  Why introduce = when it is not used
normally?  It will just confuse the
> students who are trying to use any of the documentation.  
> 
> Not to mention they might slammed for bad syntax 
> on the R-help mailing list.  :)
> 

  Those are all good reasons.
  I have said something similar before
(see <http://www.mail-archive.com/r-help@r-project.org/msg16904.html>),
but I tend to use = because it seems to be more intuitive for 
students, despite being logically confused at a deeper level, 
and I want to spare them any additional cognitive load when they 
are first getting introduced to R.
   I'm not particularly convinced by the "<- is more general
and there are some contexts where = doesn't work", because I'm
not trying to be absolutely rigorous, nor teach all the possible
ins and outs of R syntax. I would be very surprised if any of
the examples given actually came up in the course of a first-semester
statistics/modeling R course. I just want to do what works best for
the students -- the problem is deciding on the balance between
short term benefit (<- is one more odd thing to get used to)
and long term benefit (they will see <- in other contexts, so
they might as well get used to it eventually).

  Ben Bolker