[R-sig-teaching] help for beginner

[Bob]

Almost all the R documentation seems to me to be written for
statistician/programmers and is way over the heads of most students.
For that reason I made my own materials for my online classes and they
are at

http://statland.org/Software_Help/R/Rhome.htm

For the teacher, the book by John Verzani gives detailed coverage
relevant to the topics in a first course.  There is a free, older and
shorter version at CRAN last I knew which might be a useful reference
for students.  I have found these the most readable for beginners
though they tend to tell you every possible thing you can do and every
way you can do it which can be overwhelming.  

You might also look at some of the alternative interfaces to R.  R
Commander is a GUI interface that might make life easier, but last
time I tried it the installation was a nightmare taking hours as
dependencies of dependencies of dependencies downlaoded.  I made (but
did not get to test before I retired) a bootable Linux distribution
with R and all the depnedencies I wanted preinstalled.  I don't know
if it is possible to copy an entire Windows R installation to a CD and
hand out copies.  Does R get entangled with the Windows registry or
put files in the Windows directory?  It's not that the install is all
that bad but I find it way too bad to be a student's first experience
with R.  It may end with R having 2.99999 strikes against it;-(  It's
a far cry from most Windows installs.

Forwarded message:
> From r-sig-teaching-bounces at r-project.org Sun Nov 18 21:10:26 2012
> From: Nguyen Chanh Tu <nctu2006 at gmail.com>
> 
> Dear all,
> I am going to teach Probability and Statistics for engineering students. I
> probably use the book "Probability and Statistics for engineeriing and the
> sciences" by J. L. Devore. And I am going to use R for the course.
> This is the first time for me to try to use R. (Before I just use Excel).
> Could you please be so kind to help me for anything concerning to a
> beginner, especially:
> 1) Which packages should I install with the standard  R?
> 2) Can I find some where demo files of teaching or  script files concerning
> to the course.
> 3) If there is any help already had in the forum about these starting
> steps, please point out to me such that I can read more.
> 4) Is there anyone using the same textbook or similar one of mine such that
> we can exchange teaching experients on the course.
> 
> Thank you very much in advances. Looking forward to hearing from you.
> Sincerely,
> Nguyen
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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> 
> 

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