[R-sig-teaching] Convincing other colleagues to use R
Bob
bob at statland.org
Fri Jan 18 18:34:52 CET 2013
I would not expect direct attempts at persuasion to do much but there
are indirect routes that might work. If any of these folks are doing
research, they might learn of R if it is recommended by internal
statistical consultants or ITS people. Administrators might be
interested in supporting this if it reduces costs. Last I knew SPSS
was expensive. Some years ago I was in a place that had a campus-wide
Minitab license and SPSS in a single department lab. That department
started lobbying to "save money on wasteful duplication" by ditching
Minitab in favor of a campus-wide SPSS license. Turned out the
existing Minitab licesne for the whole campus cost less than SPSS in
one lab, and going to ALL SPSS would vastly INCREASE costs. This
could be especially relevant if faculty want to add the various
extra-cost capabilites to SPSS. If I were a really hard-nosed finance
administrator I would require documentation that R cannot do whatever
they want to do, and then follow up by asking ITS and stats. faculty
if anyone had checked to see if R COULD do it. (I thnk we all know the
answer to that;-) I was also in a situation where Macs were squeezed
out by ITS dropping support. (I have nothing against Macs, but they
were expensive to buy, and supporting two platforms was expensive as
well.) If you have folks on the fringe of research, sooner or later
people will want access to recent techniques for which R code is
freely downloadable but integration into commercial packages years
down the road.
For teaching I would really prefer Minitab to R FOR BEGINNERS and that
too would be much cheaper though not free. But if you are using R in
an intro. course now then down the road your students may be doing
very impressive projects in their own discipline using R. I have to
say I have been in places where the relevant faculty would be very
impressed and want to know more, and also in places where the relevant
faculty would be threatened and outlaw the use of R in student work;-(
Forwarded message:
>
> I do actually have a question that I hope is relevant. I chose to adopt R f=
> or all the reasons most people adopt it--open source, accurate, extensible,=
> platform independent. I thought that I would be able to convince my collea=
> gues 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 graphi=
> cal representations of data sets didn't convince colleagues to even downloa=
> d R (except for again, the political scientist; the ecologist already had i=
> t).
>
> I teach at a very small college with a very small IT budget and no departme=
> ntal budgets for software. The sociologists, economists and business admini=
> stration faculty won't let go of SPSS n the classroom; the biology faculty =
> use Excel and SPSS, with the exception of the ecologist mentioned previousl=
> y; the psychology faculty will only use calculators and tables.
>
> So, what I would like to hear from some of you at other institutions is wha=
> t can I do to convince/encourage my colleagues in other departments to adop=
> t 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.htm=
> l
> > _
> > | | 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)
> > ''''''
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > R-sig-teaching at r-project.org mailing list
> > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching
> >
>
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-------> 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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