[R-sig-teaching] Teaching R to Environmental Scientists

[Arthur Georges]

Albyn,

Yeah, I did have a good look at that before I went to the trouble of 
the online R primer. I have no concerns about the comprehensiveness 
of R -- it would certainly provide an open ended learning 
environment. It is good to hear that you have been teaching R at 
undergraduate level for years, and with some success no doubt. I will 
probably run them in parallel and see how I go.

Thanks for your advice,

Arthur


At 08:56 AM 11/08/2007, you wrote:
>Hi Arthur
>
>I (and others) have been using R at the undergraduate level for years.
>I don't think SPSS is suitable for much of anything; maybe SAS is
>useful for managing databases.  R does require some investment of
>time and effort.
>
>Have you looked at the CRAN website "taskviews" Environmetrics
>(Analysis of ecological and environmental data) section?  The packages
>discussed there may be a bit advanced for intro courses, but it
>does give an overview of packages useful in the domain.
>
>albyn
>
>On Sat, Aug 11, 2007 at 06:40:36AM +1000, Arthur Georges wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Great to discover this mailing list. I have been running a course in
> > environmental statistics using SAS for some years now, but have
> > recently moved to delivering the material online or in mixed mode
> > delivery. It would not come as a surprise to you as R users that the
> > SAS licencing is getting in the way of this, as the students know no
> > national boundaries, and distributing SAS across the globe is problematic.
> >
> > I am therefore exploring switching to R. I do so with some
> > trepidation, as I chose SAS in part because the code is intelligible
> > to novice programmers (I use the command line approach for
> > pedagogical reasons) whereas R syntax is likely to present a greater
> > obstacle to learning for budding environmental scientists. Can anyone
> > comment on their experiences with this? Are SAS and SPSS more
> > suitable for undergraduate levels, and R better introduced at
> > graduate level? Should I not go there for the undergrads? Any tricks
> > of the trade?
> >
> > My course is on http://ecology.lamsinternational.com/ and you will
> > note that there is an Introductory R module there that I have not yet
> > trialed on a class -- plan to in February. If you want to poke around
> > in there, the enrolment key is Fisher.
> >
> > All the best,
> >
> > Arthur
> >
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> >