[R-pkg-devel] package CatDataAnalysis

[Charles Geyer]

I have a package that has the datasets for Categorical Data Analysis by
Agresti that do not appear in the book.  The whole package is a github repo
https://github.com/cjgeyer/CatDataAnalysis.  All of the data were
translated mechanically using the R script foo.R included in the repo (but
not in the package) from Agresti's web site
http://www.stat.ufl.edu/~aa/cda/data.html.

This package seems to be a useful service to students and teachers.  The
data
are much simpler to use with this package than trying to get the data from
Agresti's web page (foo.R has 277 lines of code).

When I submitted the package to CRAN, I got the following response.

> The Description field of the DESCRIPTION file is intended to be a (one
> paragraph) description of what the package does and why it may be
> useful. Please elaborate. Tell the users what the datasets are about and
> what they contain so they can use them even when they haven't read your
> book.

> Please fix and resubmit, and document what was changed in the submission
> comments.

In an alternate universe without copyright law this seems a reasonable
request.  In this universe it seems to be asking for trouble.  I know about
fair use, but I am not a lawyer and do not want to walk the borderline
between fair use and copyright violation.

The package as it is seems OK because it comes from the author's public web
site and these data were never in the book.

Please note that I made Alan Agresti (with his acquiescence) the author of
the package because it is his book and his data, but I (or rather foo.R)
did all the work.

I replied to cran.r-project.org, but that was apparently sent to /dev/null.

This book is IMHO the authoritative textbook on the subject.  Amazon sales
rank agrees.  The book is used for many courses.  So this package would be
very helpful as is to many students and teachers.

So what to do?  Is there any way to get this package on CRAN?

-- 
Charles Geyer
Professor, School of Statistics
Resident Fellow, Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science
University of Minnesota
charlie using stat.umn.edu

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