[R-sig-teaching] Convincing other colleagues to use R in the classroom
Christopher W. Ryan
cryan at binghamton.edu
Fri Jan 18 17:02:08 CET 2013
Great questions. There is a lot of inertia in switching software. And
rightfully so, if you feel your current software is doing the job for you.
I think what intimidates many people is writing code. Despite all the
hubub in the popular press about this great wave of "tech-savvy" people,
most folks don't really know what goes on behind the monitor screen.
They are trained up in a point-and-click culture, and the prospect of
writing code makes their head spin.
Perhaps you could identify ways in which their point-and-click software
of choice is *not* doing the job for them. If their sense of "getting
the job done" means "analyzing these data right now, and finishing the
paper," then SPSS is working for them. You will have to expand their
definition of "doing the job," to include the key difference between
point-click and writing code: reproducibility. If I ask you 3 years from
now how you did this analysis, could you reproduce it for me, from
square one?
Maybe have someone bring a fairly complicated graph, or fairly
complicated analysis, that they did with SPSS or whatever, and have them
walk you through it in the sofware they used. They tell you what to do,
and you do it, following their instructions exactly. Do exactly what
they say, nothing more and nothing less. See what happens. See how long
it takes. I suspect there is a lot of tacit, unspoken knowledge, many
assumptions at play, when we use GUI software. Exposing those
assumptions might be interesting.
Caveat: I haven't tried this myself. But I've always thought it sounded
interesting.
At the end of the day, it make take the sharp edge of the budget axe to
really make a difference.
Christopher W. Ryan, MD, MS
SUNY Upstate Medical University Clinical Campus at Binghamton
425 Robinson Street, Binghamton, NY 13904
cryanatbinghamtondotedu
"Once we recognize that we do not err out of laziness, stupidity, or
evil intent, we can liberate ourselves from the impossible burden of
trying to be permanently right. We can take seriously the proposition
that we could be in error, without deeming ourselves idiotic or
unworthy." [Karen Schulz, in Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error]
Paula Grafton Young wrote:
> Re: the post from bob at statland.org: As one of those people who uses R in
> introductory statistics courses, I hope that this list does not go away. I
> agree that most of the posts I see are off-topic but the ones that are
> on-topic have been helpful to me in the classroom. Perhaps a name change
> would be in order to avoid the confusion relayed by the previous post
> on reading
> large data sets--maybe R-sig-ClassroomTeaching or something like that to
> make it clearer.
>
> I do actually have a question that I hope is relevant. I chose to adopt R
> for all the reasons most people adopt it--open source, accurate,
> extensible, platform independent. I thought that I would be able to convince
> my colleagues in other departments to at least consider using R (with
> something like RKWard or another GUI). I have failed miserably in
> doing so. I've
> offered workshops, invited colleagues to attend the R labs for my classes,
> and have had minimal response (one political scientist, one ecologist).
> Even having students from my classes do demonstrations of phenomenal graphical
> representations of data sets didn't convince colleagues to even download R
> (except for again, the political scientist; the ecologist already had it).
>
> I teach at a very small college with a very small IT budget and no
> departmental budgets for software. The sociologists, economists and
> business administration faculty won't let go of SPSS n the classroom;
> the biology
> faculty use Excel and SPSS, with the exception of the ecologist mentioned
> previously; the psychology faculty will only use calculators and tables.
>
> So, what I would like to hear from some of you at other institutions is what
> can I do to convince/encourage my colleagues in other departments to adopt
> R and save our institution a significant amount of money in licensing?
>
> Thank you in advance for your insights and advice.
>
> ---
> Dr. Paula Grafton Young
> Associate Professor of Mathematics
> Chair, Curriculum Committee, 2011 - 2013
> Chair, Strategic Planning Steering Committee, 2012 - 2013
> paula.young at salem.edu
> 336.721.2747 (O)
> 336.721.2653 (F)
>
> <http://www.facebook.com/SalemCollege><http://www.twitter.com/SalemCollege>
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 10:12 AM, Bob <bob at statland.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> I am one of the people who lobbied for the creation of this list long
>> ago. I am not sure R is a great choice for a first course in
>> statistics, but I thought that if someone chose to use it, then they
>> and their students might need all the help they could get to make it
>> easier for the class. But right from the beginning, the bulk of the
>> posts to the list were like this latest one quoted below -- questions
>> about how to do something with R that has no obvious connection to
>> pedagogy or to using R in a first course. This means that those of us
>> interested in the actual topic of this list get lots of off-topic
>> messages, while those who post the messages reach only a small
>> audience that may not be interested in their question. Some off topic
>> posts are answered, some ingnored, and some posters get redirected
>> (even scolded) toward a more appropriate list. I see only losers in
>> this process.
>>
>> So my question is whether this list really serves any useful purpose,
>> or does it just siphon off queries that should have gone elsewhere?
>> Those who post those queries would be likely to get an answer, and get
>> it sooner, if they posted to an appropriate list in the first place.
>> My own answer is that this list is not useful at the present time.
>> Possibly in the future more people will be interested in R for an
>> introductory course and then they might be glad if this list were
>> still alive, but so far...
>>
>> So I am wondering what others on the list think.
>>
>> Here's the official description of this list.
>>
>> Special Interest Group (SIG) on teaching statistics with R. The
>> primary purpose of the group is to provide a forum where instructors
>> using R in their statistics courses can share ideas, teaching
>> materials, and experiences. One particular focus of the SIG is to
>> provide helpful support to instructors new to R who are teaching
>> introductory statistics courses populated with students with little
>> experience in statistics, statistical software, and command line
>> interfaces.
>>
>> Here is where most posts to this list really should have gone.
>>
>> R-help
>>
>> The ?main? R mailing list, for discussion about problems and
>> solutions using R, announcements (not covered by ?R-announce? or
>> ?R-packages?, see above), about the availability of new
>> functionality for R and documentation of R, comparison and
>> compatibility with S-plus, and for the posting of nice examples
>> and benchmarks.
>>
>> Forwarded message:
>>>
>>> Hi Everyone,
>>>
>>> I am a little new to R and the first problem I am facing is the dilemma
>>> whether R is suitable for files of size 2 GB's and slightly more then 2
>>> Million rows. When I try importing the data using read.table, it seems to
>>> take forever and I have to cancel the command. Are there any special
>>> techniques or methods which i can use or some tricks of the game that I
>>> should keep in mind in order to be able to do data analysis on such large
>>> files using R?
>>
>>
>> -------> First-time AP Stats. teacher? Help is on the way! See
>> http://courses.ncssm.edu/math/Stat_Inst/Stats2007/Bob%20Hayden/Relief.html
>> _
>> | | Robert W. Hayden
>> | | 142 Main Street
>> / | Apartment 104
>> | | Jaffrey, New Hampshire 03452 USA
>> | | email: bob@ the site below
>> / | website: http://statland.org
>> | x / phone: (603) 532-7224 (home)
>> ''''''
>>
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