[R-sig-teaching] [dr.of.chaos at gmail.com: Teaching R in high school and college science and math courses]

[User Hayden]

I applaud your goals and what I can see on Amazon looks good.  In
addition to inertia and addiction to graphing calculators, high shcool
teachers (I've worked with them in AP Stats. for 20 years or so) are
concerned about access and equity.  Students can take the TIs
anywhere.  There is no guarantee that students will have a suitable
computer or Internet access at home.  Many high schools have very
limited computer labs but the TIs can be used in a regular classroom.
My counter to all that is that you can run R on computers people are
paying the recycling center to haul away.  But there is no organized
effort to make use of that resource.  In addition to gathering up the
computers, one needs to find spaces to put them in.  

Years ago I made a scientific version of Puppy Linux that included R
and lots of other math. software.  That meant your recycling center
computer did not have to have a working/legal OS.  Or even a working
hard drive!

I posted a link to your book on Amazon in the AP Statistics
Community.  There is a small but growing number of R users there. 


----- Forwarded message from Brian Dennis <dr.of.chaos at gmail.com> -----

Date: Tue, 17 May 2016 14:45:30 -0700
From: Brian Dennis <dr.of.chaos at gmail.com>
To: r-sig-teaching at r-project.org
Subject: [R-sig-teaching] Teaching R in high school and college science and
	math courses

Hi fellow R-philes,

My contention is that R is not just for statistics.  Rather, R can be used
in math and science classes in colleges, community colleges, and even high
schools, to replace most uses of graphing calculators and proprietary
spreadsheets.

Various aspects of R seem to have immense potential for helping STEM
(science, technology, engineering, math) education:

(1) With R, scientific calculations and graphs are fun and easy to produce.
A student using R can focus on the scientific and mathematical concepts
without having to pore through a manual of daunting calculator keystroke
instructions. The students would be analyzing data and depicting equations
just as scientists are doing in labs all over the world.

(2) R could be learned once and used across a wide variety of STEM courses,
promoting the integration of STEM subjects that has been much discussed in
principle but elusive in practice.

(3) R is now probably the most universally available computational tool
(aside from counting on fingers). Many students access a computer to use
social media, and most schools and colleges have institutional machines (of
varying quality) available to the students. Versions of R exist for most
platforms (going back 10 years or more), so R could be made instantly
available to every student in every course.

(4) R invites collaboration. Students can work in groups to conduct
projects in R, build R scripts, and improve each others??? work. Results on a
computer screen are easier to view in groups than on a calculator. At home,
students can work cooperatively online with R. Every new class can build
new accomplishments upon those of previous classes. R builds on itself.

(5) R skills follow a student to college and professional life. College
statistics and advanced science courses are increasingly teaching R. R
skills are a becoming a valuable professional credential in sci-tech, data
analytic, and finance firms.

(6) R tutorial websites and videos for beginners are now widespread and
free.

I have taught R as a guest teacher in 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th grades
(& am a university statistician/scientist by profession).  The kids love it
and take to it with gusto.  R seems to them like a real important thing
when they produce, all by themselves, beautiful graphs of important
concepts.

Toward the goal of popularizing R as a general product for scientific
graphs and calculations, I wrote a book, "The R Student Companion".  It is
an inexpensive paperback modeled in a "lab manual" format.  Naturally, so
many free instructional resources are available for R that instructors can
bring R into courses without needing extra books.  However, my book is
targeted at a high school level audience, having just a little algebra, and
it contains real, compelling scientific examples and computational
exercises and projects.  The value-added convenience, and the fact that the
book ports across many courses, seem to me to make the book a bargain.

Publisher website here:
https://www.crcpress.com/The-R-Student-Companion/Dennis/p/book/9781439875407

Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Student-Companion-Brian-Dennis/dp/1439875405

Read reviews here:
http://webpages.uidaho.edu/~brian/reviews_of_RSC.pdf

Readin', Rritin', Rithmetic, and R!

Enjoy!

Brian Dennis
Professor of Wildlife and Statistics
University of Idaho

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