[R] introducing R to high school students

[Christopher W. Ryan]

I have to agree that Excel is a poor tool for "serious scientific and 
engineering data analysis" (love the phrase.) I too have spent way too 
much time beating Excel files into submission, with workarounds and 
manipulations, just to be able to do anything useful with them. I'm told 
that one can to some degree impose structure on Excel data entry, but I 
don't know how, and no users ever seem to set up their spreadsheets that 
way.

Somehow, a reasonable tool for business (I suppose, not being a 
businessman), has infiltrated the scientific world as well.

That's really the motivation for my proposal to my science teacher 
colleague. I want to introduce budding scientists to the idea that there 
is a better tool for data analysis, even for exploratory analysis and 
univariates and bivariates, which R does very handily. Why start an 
analysis in Excel only to have to switch to something else for the 
latter half?

And this will lead inevitably into conversations about better ways to 
record, store, and share data. And it ties into concepts of 
collaboration and reproducible research.

--Chris Ryan
SUNY Upstate Clinical Campus
Binghamton, NY