[R] introducing R to high school students

Wed Apr 18 17:01:26 CEST 2012

Christopher,

I originally thought about  writing off list to avoid a plethora of babble.
However here goes.

I don't see any reason why good students can 't learn the fundamentals of
R.  It has lots of advance methods that perhaps are too complex to handle
for younger - less experienced people. On the other hand, if your students
are engaged and already doing graphs and other spreadsheet applications
than why not go ahead and experiment with some of the functionality R has
to offer.

The critics seem to forget that inner city kids in CA were exceptional in
their ability to learn advanced placement calculus when pushed to learn.
The US lags far behind the international community in math skills, so if R
can help them catch up, go ahead and give it a try.

I'd pick some elementary concepts first to allow them to become familiar
with the software.  A series of exercises in learning what a vector is,
then how vectors can  contain more than one attribute.  Show then how, to
add column, how to add rows, develop simple arithmetic problems, etc.  then
move to data.frames and perhaps, lists with mixed numeric and categorical
attributes. Demonstrate the apply functions, trellis (or lattice) and
scatter plots etc.

My two cents,

Steve Friedman Ph. D.
Ecologist  / Spatial Statistical Analyst
Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Park
950 N Krome Ave (3rd Floor)
Homestead, Florida 33034

Steve_Friedman at nps.gov
Office (305) 224 - 4282
Fax     (305) 224 - 4147

             "Christopher W.                                               
             Ryan"                                                         
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                                       Re: [R] introducing R to high       
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             AM                                                            

Thanks all for the excellent thought-provoking comments.

I want to clarify that these students are, for good or for ill, already
doing all these analytical and graphical things for their projects. They
are doing them with Excel and SPSS. One of my goals would be to teach
them how they can be done (and I think done better) in R. Better for
many reasons, not least of which is the reproducibility offered by lines
of saved code.

It seems that many (not all) on the list agree with the science teachers
that R is too difficult for high school students. Is R intrinsically
more difficult to learn than commercial spreadsheet software? If so,
why? Or is the issue that it is difficult to change to R after many
years experience in the mind-set of spreadsheets? If a child was
"brought up" on R for math/stats, in a developmentally progressive way,
instead of Excel or a graphing calculator, would he/she perceive it as
difficult?

Are the intrinsic cognitive differences between high schoolers, college
students, and graduate students substantial enough to explain why the
last can learn R and the first can't? Or is it a matter of exposure,
opportunity, etc?

Indrajit, I'm curious: given your preference for hand-drawn graphs for
learners (a very good point), why is Excel "fine" but R not?

At any rate, I should probably migrate this thread over to the Teaching
SIG listserve, which I didn't know about before.

Thanks again.

--Chris
Christopher W. Ryan, MD
SUNY Upstate Medical University Clinical Campus at Binghamton
425 Robinson Street, Binghamton, NY  13904
cryanatbinghamtondotedu

"Observation is a more powerful force than you could possibly reckon.
The invisible, the overlooked, and the unobserved are the most in danger
of reaching the end of the spectrum. They lose the last of their light.
>From there, anything can happen . . ."  [God, in "Joan of Arcadia,"
episode entitled, "The Uncertainty Principle."]

Bert Gunter wrote:
> <...snipped>
>
>>> I anticipate keeping things very simple:
>>> --objects and the fact that there is stuff inside them. str(), head(),
tail()
>>> --how to get data into R
>>> --dataframes, as I imagine they will mostly be using single,
>>> "rectangular" datasets
>>> --a lot of graphics (I can't imagine that  plot(force, acceleration)
>>> is beyond a high-schooler's capability.)
>>> --simple descriptive statistics
>>> --maybe t-tests, chi-square tests, and simple linear regression.
>>>
>>
>> I have some experience in this and would have to agree with Indrajit
>> that this is not a good idea.
>>
>> When I tried to teach R to a high school student it was not very
>> successful.  Certainly based on that experience the list above is way
>> too complex.  Don't teach anything on that list at all.  The number of
>> concepts involved in that is simply overwhelming.
>
> Oh amen amen!
>
> I'd go farther: It's overwhelming for college students.
>
> Farther yet: I've met very few scientists and engineers who understand
> what a standard deviation is. Fewer still who understand the
> difference between a sample statistic and a population parameter for
> which it's an estimate.
>
> This approach to "basic" statistics is (imho) symptomatic of why our
> discipline is so widely disliked and misunderstood.
>
> Cheers,
> Bert
>
>  Also avoid teaching
>> anything that requires complex installation if you want them to be
>> able to carry it forward by themselves.
>>
>> I would expect the reaction would be that most will have no interest
>> and the ones that do will be frustrated by the large number of
>> concepts needed to get going.
>>
>> The only part that seemed to trigger any interest was when I showed
>> the large list of colors available in colors() and then playing with
>> inserting different colors in:
>>
>> colors()
>> plot(1:5, col = "violetred")
>>
>> Assuming you are committed to this and go ahead, I would divide it
>> into two parts:
>>
>> 1. a graphics demo -- make it clear its a demonstration so they have
>> an appreciation of what is possible and you are not actually teaching
>> anything in this portion.
>>
>> 2. Teach them how to install R, run the above two commands
>> (substituting in different colors), how to exit and point out that
>> there are many tutorials in:
>> http://cran.r-project.org/other-docs.html
>> and they can pick one they like (since the official documents will be
>> over their head).
>>
>> If you do that then perhaps a small number will have sufficient
>> interest to try it some more at home but I wouldn't be surprised if
>> none do and that most or all would prefer something with more
>> immediate gratification.
>>
>> --
>> Statistics & Software Consulting
>> GKX Group, GKX Associates Inc.
>> tel: 1-877-GKX-GROUP
>> email: ggrothendieck at gmail.com
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
>
>
>

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