Chris,
 
Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against learning R at an early age. However, I feel at a school level, the focus should be a bit more on programming. Here are some reasons why would not recommend R at school level:
 
1. At school we seldom deal with lot of data - the focus is more on concepts. Excel is an excellent tool and no matter how much we love or hate it - we will be using Excel a lot in our lives.
 
2. R language is a very high level language. To get a good grasp on programming - I would recommend any one of QBASIC, C or JAVA (Java might be a bit too much given OOP is not easy). Learn stuff the hard way - that way your fundamentals get strong. Even Excel VBA is a very powerful language - if you can incorporate that in your course - nothing like it. You will be churning out data scientists from your school.
 
3. The danger of introducing R too early - similar to introducing calculators to kids who are learning basic mental maths. They get too dependent on tools
 
Hope this clears my point of view.
 
Regards,
Indrajit
 


________________________________
From: Christopher W. Ryan <cryan@binghamton.edu>
To: R-help <R-help@r-project.org> 
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [R] introducing R to high school students


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

