[R] Comments on "Introduction to R"

[Abdullah Khasawneh]

Dear all,

I have recently finished reading "Introduction to R" and enjoyed it and benefited from it immensely. Thank you very much for your efforts.

I feel the word "corrections" is a bit presumptuous, so below are a few suggestions I have regarding the text. Please let me know if I am mistaken in any.

Thank you again.

Best regards,
Abdullah Khasawneh

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Page 2:
(Indeed most of the system supplied functions are themselves written in the S language.)\
I suggest a hyphen between the two highlighted words.

Page 2:
We prefer to think of it of an environment within which many classical and modern statistical techniques have been implemented.
Perhaps "as an environment"?

Page 4:
The �Search Engine and Keywords� link in the page loaded by help.start() is particularly useful as it is contains a high-level concept list which searches though available functions.
I think these should be "as it contains" and "through".

Page 5:
Commands are separated either by a semi-colon (�;�), or by a newline.
I think the two words have been connected inadvertently.

Page 6:
When R is started at later time from the same directory it reloads the workspace from this file.
I think it's "at a later time".

Page 6:
... but it can be quite hard to decide what they might be when the several analyses have been conducted in the same directory.
Perhaps it should be "when several analyses", without "the".

Page 7:
Notice that the assignment operator (�<-�), which consists of the two characters �<� (�less than�) and �-� (�minus�) occurring strictly side-by-side and it �points� to the object receiving the value of the expression.
I suggest a comma here, and deleting "and it".

Page 14:
Similarly character() is a empty character vector, and so on.
It should be "an empty". Also, a comma after "similarly" would be nice.

Page 14:
... makes it an object of length 5 consisting of just the former components with even index.
Should it be "with even indices"?

Page 17:
Since there is an builtin function var() to calculate...
I suggest "a built-in".

Page 17:
Note that R�s a builtin function sd() is something different.
There is no need for the indefinite article, and perhaps "built-in" should be hyphenated.

Page 20:
For example, if the vector h contains 24 or fewer, numbers then the command...
The comma should be after the word "numbers".

Page 20:
... would use h to set up 3 by 4 by 2 array in Z.
I believe it's "a 3-by-4-by-2". I am not sure about the hyphenation, but there should be an indefinite article.

Page 21:
The result of the function is an array of the same size as a but with old dimension given by perm[j] becoming the new j-th dimension.
It's "with the old dimension".

Page 24:
In this case any vector argument, possibly cyclically extended, are of course taken as row vectors.
Either "argument" should be pluralized, or other parts of the sentence singularized.

Page 27:
... and by default1 character vectors are coerced to be factors, whose levels are the unique values appearing in the vector.
Unfortunately, in the current edition of R, they are coerced to be character variables, if I'm not mistaken.

Page 30:
By default numeric items (except row labels) are read as numeric variables and non-numeric variables, such as Cent.heat in the example, as factors.
I suggest a comma after "By default". Also, please refer to the note above about coercion into factors.

Page 47:
... it replaces the value, in that environment, with the value of right hand side.
Maybe it should be "of the right-hand side".

Page 54:
... (Akaike�s An Information Criterion)...
I think it's "Akaike information criterion".

Page 63:
Although this is done automatically, it may useful to know that...
This is missing the verb "be".

Page 66:
Also lm.obj may be list with a coefficients component of length 2...
I recommend adding the indefinite article "a" before the word "list".

Page 68:
The identify() functions performs no plotting itself, but...
The word "functions" is pluralized.

Page 76:
R does not have builtin capabilities for dynamic or interactive graphics, e.g. rotating point clouds or to �brushing� (interactively highlighting) points.
I suggest a hyphen in "built-in", and perhaps "for" instead of "to".

Page 79:
... platforms, considerable effort has gone into make the scripting facilities as platform-independent as is feasible.
The gerund "making" should be used here.

End of list.
Thank you for your patience.
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