Thank you both Peter and Duncan for explanations.  'The R Inferno' is indeed
not so much introduction but I find it useful to know about how I can go
wrong in simple things before I do.

Mvh.
Marie

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 3:03 PM, Peter Dalgaard <P.Dalgaard@biostat.ku.dk>wrote:

> Marie Sivertsen wrote:
> > I see 'The R Inferno' being refered quiet often recently.  But it was now
> > pointed by Duncan Murdoch that for example the statement concerning
> > variables in a for loop is not correct in there (page 62).  As I can not
> > find any information about the book been reviewed by anyone I have a
> > question:  is it reliable resource for learning about R?  What is the
> > authority of Patrick Burns?  I would like to avoid spending much time on
> > learning from 'The R Inferno' to only later discover that it was wrong.
>
>
> In short: Don't worry too much.
>
> Pat is an experienced S and R user. In fact, he's been around since R
> was little but a gleam in its fathers' eyes. He has a record of writing
> stuff and publishing on the web, in a style somewhat different from what
> the publishing companies seem to want. The R Inferno is his latest
> addition, so he's liable to make a few "Hey, I wrote about that" kind of
> posts.
>
> A quick look suggest that this should be quite an amusing read, but it
> isn't a textbook for beginners learning R. Rather, it is assumed that
> you already know the basics, and now need to read about the pitfalls.
> There could be inaccuracies (the for loop description is indeed mildly
> off-base), but the intended audience can reasonably be assumed to
> possess a critical mind. And the nice thing about web publications is
> that mistakes can be fixed quickly.
>
> -pd
>
>

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