I agree with much of what you said. If there is a reasonable effort to have
read the documention or otherwise to have solved the problem on their own,
and a clear question, I will frequently at least give a hint or a pointer
toward a relevant function or two. Also, I wouldn't consider that the first
examples given are homework. I only object to answering questions where the
point of the question is how to do something in R.

The question I replied to today had, well, no actual question. The querent
gets credit for not trying to hide that it was homework, at least, but it
was very clearly an assigned question on how to do something in R, which in
my interpretation is contrary to current list policy.

I will admit a greater willingness to answer well-formed homework questions
that appear on R-help proper, though. I'm sure that's a personal failing.

While I suppose it's not all about me, if the list policy is changed then I
at least won't answer that way.

Sarah

On Saturday, November 10, 2012, Berend Hasselman wrote:

>
> On 10-11-2012, at 21:09, Greg Snow wrote:
>
> > This is to all R-helpers (Sarah is just the one that I am replying to),
> >
> > Have we become a little too draconian on the "not a homework help list"
> > issue?
>
> Probably.
>
> >
> > Now if someone just states the HW question, gives no indication that they
> > have done anything to try to solve it themselves, and expects us to give
> > them a completed answer without effort on their part, I am happy to light
> > up the flame thrower (and if they are my students they could very well
> lose
> > points for poor questions).  But I think there are cases where it is
> > reasonable for us to help point students in the right direction (at our
> > own discretion, but without a knee jerk "no homework" response).  Some of
> > the types of questions that we have seen on this list that I think would
> > qualify here would include things like:
> >
> > I already turned in my homework after using <program other than R> that
> the
> > teacher uses, but now I would like to learn how to do it in R as well,
> can
> > anyone give me pointers to which help page(s) I should read to learn how
> to
> > do <topic>.
> >
> > My teacher says we can use any program we want and I chose R, but the
> > teacher and TA's don't know R, I have figured out most of this problem
> > <problem statement and code tried so far>, but I can't figure out how to
> do
> > this last part, any pointers?
> >
> > I fit this model <model info> to the HW data using <R commands> and these
> > are the results that I see <results>, but the answer in the book while
> > matching on some things has a different value for these coefficients
> <list
> > with other numbers>.  I am thinking that R must be using a different
> > default or encoding than the book, can anyone explain the reason for the
> > difference or give a pointer to where it is documented?
> >
> > And other cases where a student is clearly doing homework, but shows that
> > they have made an effort on their own and is not demanding we do the work
> > for them, but would rather like a pointer or hint to help them learn
> > better.  I vote that we adopt a policy (unofficial) that if a student
> shows
> > effort and asks a reasonable question that we respond with answers that
> > will help the student continue to learn (and become a better member of
> the
> > R community).  What do others think?
> >
>
> I would tend to agree with the last paragraph.
>
>
>

-- 
Sarah Goslee
http://www.stringpage.com
http://www.sarahgoslee.com
http://www.functionaldiversity.org

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