Hi Chris,
 
I am not sure, whether introducing R to High School students would be a good idea as I feel we should encourage students to sketch the graphs in paper to get their concepts right. Excel is fine, but - if I write an equation on the board, will the student be able to visualize its graph? Allowing students to use software to plot graphs at a very early age may hinder that learning. What I would focus on (as the teacher pointed out - that they may not be able to write code) - is being able to write simple codes to get a grasp on programming (they can use QBASIC which is one of the simplest programming softwares). 
 
R to my mind should be introduced at an undergraduate level - where they are able to use its real power (vectors, matrices, graphics etc.). 
 
Thats my view :)
 
Regards,
Indrajit
 
 


________________________________
From: Christopher W Ryan <cryan@binghamton.edu>
To: R-help <R-help@r-project.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:16 AM
Subject: [R] introducing R to high school students

I participate peripherally on a listserve for middle- and high-school
science teachers. Sometimes questions about graphing or data analysis
come up. I never miss an opportunity to advocate for R. However, the
teachers are often skeptical that their students would be able to
issue commands or write a little code; they think it would be too
difficult. Perhaps this stems from the Microsoft- and
spreadsheet-centered, pointy-clicky culture prevalent in most US
public schools. Then again, I have little experience teaching this age
group, besides my own kids and my Science Olympiad team, so I respect
their concerns and expertise.

I don't know yet what software they generally use, but I suspect MS
Excel and SPSS.

Now I have to put my money where my mouth is. I've offered to visit a
high school and introduce R to some fairly advanced students
participating in a longitudinal 3-year science research class.

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.

Alas, probably more than we would have time to cover.

Has anyone done anything with R in high schools?

Thanks.

--Chris Ryan
SUNY Upstate Medical University
Binghamton Clinical Campus

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