Dear all, I am interested by the various messages sent to the r-help mailing list these last few days about documentation on R. Yet, there are a lot of issues actually open on this topic, and it is not clear to me what is the "urgent need for documentation" on R. R comes with the 'Introduction to R' by Venables et al. I recommend the colleagues and students in my lab who are interested in R to read it. Surely, this is not sufficient to use R efficiently, but I found using the 'Intro to R' with the on-line help (text and html) a good combination to run analyses and write programs. But this could reflect the fact that I still use R at a relatively low level; more experienced users may have a different opinion. I have produced myself a short introduction to R for the postgrad students here (so it is in French), and understand that similar documents have been produced elsewhere. Would it be useful to put something together? To me, the greatest issue is the audience targeted by a documentation. Many specialists are potentially interested by R, from the top-statisticians to the users who hardly knows about statistics but need to run some tests (at least to publish their results). It seems to me that some queries on the list have more to do with "using statistics" than with "using R". As long as non-statisticians use R (like me), this seems inevitable. Another issue is about languages (human ones, not computer ones): is there a need to translate R docs? Finally, is it possible to set a system of documentation that is able to track the development of the software? I am personnally impressed by the pace of release of new versions of R. These are just some quick thoughts. Best wishes to all, Emmanuel Paradis -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Emmanuel Paradis wrote:> Dear all, > > I am interested by the various messages sent to the r-help mailing list > these last few days about documentation on R. Yet, there are a lot of > issues actually open on this topic, and it is not clear to me what is the > "urgent need for documentation" on R.I agree. The online help is extremely useful. However, and it's just my personal opinion, some documentation for advanced user on how to write new R functions, more advanced R features...maybe quite useful.> > > R comes with the 'Introduction to R' by Venables et al. I recommend the > colleagues and students in my lab who are interested in R to read it. > Surely, this is not sufficient to use R efficiently, but I found using the > 'Intro to R' with the on-line help (text and html) a good combination to > run analyses and write programs. But this could reflect the fact that I > still use R at a relatively low level; more experienced users may have a > different opinion. > > I have produced myself a short introduction to R for the postgrad students > here (so it is in French), and understand that similar documents have been > produced elsewhere. Would it be useful to put something together? > > To me, the greatest issue is the audience targeted by a documentation. Many > specialists are potentially interested by R, from the top-statisticians to > the users who hardly knows about statistics but need to run some tests (at > least to publish their results). It seems to me that some queries on the > list have more to do with "using statistics" than with "using R". As long > as non-statisticians use R (like me), this seems inevitable. > > Another issue is about languages (human ones, not computer ones): is there > a need to translate R docs?It will definitely be needed. I joined the R mailing list about 2 months ago and have since seen lots of users from Taiwan. Actually, there are LOTS of Chinese people around the world who use R (there is no doubt about it, given that there are so many Chinese people around). It will be great if we can start of having a Chinese translation? I'll be quite happy to do it, but if I'm the only one doing it it will take quite some time to translate the whole "An Introduction to R" into Chinese...> > > Finally, is it possible to set a system of documentation that is able to > track the development of the software? I am personnally impressed by the > pace of release of new versions of R. > > These are just some quick thoughts. > > Best wishes to all, > > Emmanuel Paradis > -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- > r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html > Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" > (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch > _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ko-Kang Wang Undergraduate Student Computer Science/Statistics Double Major University of Auckland Auckland 1005 New Zealand ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Douglas Bates wrote:> Ko-Kang Wang <Ko-Kang at xtra.co.nz> writes: > > > Emmanuel Paradis wrote: > > > > I am interested by the various messages sent to the r-help mailing list > > > these last few days about documentation on R. Yet, there are a lot of > > > issues actually open on this topic, and it is not clear to me what is the > > > "urgent need for documentation" on R. > > > I agree. The online help is extremely useful. However, and it's > > just my personal opinion, some documentation for advanced user on > > how to write new R functions, more advanced R features...maybe quite > > useful. > > You're in luck. Springer has (apparently) just published "S > Programming" by Venables and Ripley. In the U.S. amazon.com says it > is available now at (US)$65 plus shipping.Does any of you (especially the R users in New Zealand) know where I can purchase it in New Zealand? Thanks. -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ko-Kang Wang Undergraduate Student Computer Science/Statistics Double Major University of Auckland Auckland 1005 New Zealand ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
On Tue, 2 May 2000, Emmanuel Paradis wrote:>To me, the greatest issue is the audience targeted by a documentation. Many >specialists are potentially interested by R, from the top-statisticians to >the users who hardly knows about statistics but need to run some tests (at >least to publish their results). It seems to me that some queries on the >list have more to do with "using statistics" than with "using R". As long >as non-statisticians use R (like me), this seems inevitable.I just occured to me that something that would probably boost the number of users, is a compendium on "How to do the things one usually does in a beginners statistics course for non-statisticians". Many are introduced to statistical software in such a course, and I can imagine many will never use any other software than they were introduced to in the course. Such a compendium might catch new users and their instructors at the very start. Here at my university, the standard package has been MINITAB. I have had one single session of MINITAB myself, and it appeared to me as an endless quest for the right dropdown menu point or dialog-box point. I switched to S-plus, and to R after learning about it the week after. The reason I mention this is the seemingly irrational urge many have to have drop-down menus, even though the path to what you need is considerably longer than just typing. If the compendium is able to show that the things you need are not at all far away, and much more logical than drop-down menus, I think many will be drawn towards R. Best, Kjetil -- Kjetil Kjernsmo Graduate astronomy-student Problems worthy of attack University of Oslo, Norway Prove their worth by hitting back E-mail: kjetikj at astro.uio.no - Piet Hein Homepage <URL:http://www.astro.uio.no/~kjetikj/> Webmaster at skepsis.no -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:> On Tue, 2 May 2000, Emmanuel Paradis wrote: > > >To me, the greatest issue is the audience targeted by a documentation. Many > >specialists are potentially interested by R, from the top-statisticians to > >the users who hardly knows about statistics but need to run some tests (at > >least to publish their results). It seems to me that some queries on the > >list have more to do with "using statistics" than with "using R". As long > >as non-statisticians use R (like me), this seems inevitable. > > I just occured to me that something that would probably boost the number > of users, is a compendium on "How to do the things one usually does in a > beginners statistics course for non-statisticians". Many are introduced to > statistical software in such a course, and I can imagine many will never > use any other software than they were introduced to in the course. > Such a compendium might catch new users and their instructors at the very > start. >I agree. Here is the my university we have a course on R, but it is just used for number crunching mainly. I have written pieces and pieces of R targetted on beginners in some fields, such as economics, econometrics, mathematics..etc. I may, at some point, put them together.> > Here at my university, the standard package has been MINITAB. I have had > one single session of MINITAB myself, and it appeared to me as an endless > quest for the right dropdown menu point or dialog-box point. I switched to > S-plus, and to R after learning about it the week after. The reason I > mention this is the seemingly irrational urge many have to have drop-down > menus, even though the path to what you need is considerably longer than > just typing. If the compendium is able to show that the things you need > are not at all far away, and much more logical than drop-down menus, I > think many will be drawn towards R. >What exactly do you mean? Do you mean R should be GUI (Graphical User Interface)? I personally think it is GUI enough> > Best, > > Kjetil > -- > Kjetil Kjernsmo > Graduate astronomy-student Problems worthy of attack > University of Oslo, Norway Prove their worth by hitting back > E-mail: kjetikj at astro.uio.no - Piet Hein > Homepage <URL:http://www.astro.uio.no/~kjetikj/> > Webmaster at skepsis.no > > -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- > r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html > Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" > (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch > _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ko-Kang Wang Undergraduate Student Computer Science/Statistics Double Major University of Auckland Auckland 1005 New Zealand ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
On Wed, 3 May 2000, Ko-Kang Wang wrote:>> S-plus, and to R after learning about it the week after. The reason I >> mention this is the seemingly irrational urge many have to have drop-down >> menus, even though the path to what you need is considerably longer than >> just typing. If the compendium is able to show that the things you need >> are not at all far away, and much more logical than drop-down menus, I >> think many will be drawn towards R. >> > >What exactly do you mean? Do you mean R should be GUI (Graphical User Interface)?Not at all! On the contrary (almost). If you show in the compendium how easy it is to read your data from file, perform an lm() on command line, they will realize that using lots and lots of drop down menus are simply not rational. However, you have to guide them through everything, step by step. (That being said, there are times where a GUI is not a bad thing, take GIMP for example). Best, Kjetil -- Kjetil Kjernsmo Graduate astronomy-student Problems worthy of attack University of Oslo, Norway Prove their worth by hitting back E-mail: kjetikj at astro.uio.no - Piet Hein Homepage <URL:http://www.astro.uio.no/~kjetikj/> Webmaster at skepsis.no -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:> On Wed, 3 May 2000, Ko-Kang Wang wrote: > > >> S-plus, and to R after learning about it the week after. The reason I > >> mention this is the seemingly irrational urge many have to have drop-down > >> menus, even though the path to what you need is considerably longer than > >> just typing. If the compendium is able to show that the things you need > >> are not at all far away, and much more logical than drop-down menus, I > >> think many will be drawn towards R. > >> > > > >What exactly do you mean? Do you mean R should be GUI (Graphical User Interface)? > > Not at all! On the contrary (almost). If you show in the compendium how > easy it is to read your data from file, perform an lm() on command line, > they will realize that using lots and lots of drop down menus are simply > not rational. However, you have to guide them through everything, step by > step. (That being said, there are times where a GUI is not a bad thing, > take GIMP for example).Ah I see what you mean. I have to agree with you on GIMP, XFigs is another good one!> > > Best, > > Kjetil > -- > Kjetil Kjernsmo > Graduate astronomy-student Problems worthy of attack > University of Oslo, Norway Prove their worth by hitting back > E-mail: kjetikj at astro.uio.no - Piet Hein > Homepage <URL:http://www.astro.uio.no/~kjetikj/> > Webmaster at skepsis.no-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ko-Kang Wang Undergraduate Student Computer Science/Statistics Double Major University of Auckland Auckland 1005 New Zealand ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
If I may throw in my two cents. I sometimes consult with scientists who use GUI-based statistical packages for doing "simple" analyses of their data. The packages I've seen don't do a good job of producing a usable audit trail. If someone comes to me and says "What does this mean?" or "What do I do now?", I pretty much have to go and watch their actual keystrokes while they repeat (hopefully) the operations. One real advantages to the dialects of S is that the script that does the analysis serves (or can serve, if well-commented) as an audit trail that can be rerun (with changes, if needed). One take-home lesson here is, if there is to be a GUI that produces R function calls, it would be really helpful if it were easy to insert comments that document the actions, and that the function calls be captured in a file that can be 'sourced' to re-run the analysis. R. Woodrow Setzer, Jr. Phone: (919) 541-0128 Biostatistics and Fax: (919) 541-4002 Research Support Staff NHEERL MD-55; US EPA; RTP, NC 27711 |--------+------------------------> | | p.dalgaard at bio| | | stat.ku.dk | | | | | | 05/03/2000 | | | 08:23 AM | | | | |--------+------------------------> >----------------------------------------------------------| | | | To: kjetil.kjernsmo at astro.uio.no | | cc: Ko-Kang at xtra.co.nz, | | r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch | | Subject: Re: [R] R Documentation(s) | >----------------------------------------------------------| Kjetil Kjernsmo <kjetil.kjernsmo at astro.uio.no> writes:> >What exactly do you mean? Do you mean R should be GUI (Graphical UserInterface)?> > Not at all! On the contrary (almost). If you show in the compendium how > easy it is to read your data from file, perform an lm() on command line, > they will realize that using lots and lots of drop down menus are simply > not rational. However, you have to guide them through everything, step by > step. (That being said, there are times where a GUI is not a bad thing, > take GIMP for example).Actually, I think there are valid reasons for people to want GUI interfaces to statistics. One argument that I hear frequently is that nonstatisticians tend to do other things than analyse data for extended periods of time, and it becomes difficult to remember the formalities from one time to the next. So they get scared of the prospect of staring empty-minded at the R prompt. Also, some people have small needs and it may be better to have a simple-minded interface for the simplest things. E.g. for chi-square on a given table, it will be easier to pop up a table editor where you fill in the number of rows and columns and then fill counts into a grid than it is to type chisq.test(matrix(c(1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9),3)). As long as you can turn the GUI *off* and use R as usual, I see no reason not to have some form of GUI. (..said the man who has been looking at Tcl/Tk integration issues since Easter.) In particular, there are good things to be said about the type of GUI that generates the function calls and displays them to the user. -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._ -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Dear all, Many thanks for the replies to my yesterday's message. I'm still waiting for more opinions to try to synthesize the major ideas. Surprisingly to me, there are few reactions from the R Development Core Team. Brian Ripley pointed out that an R language manual is in progress.>From Ragnar Beer <rbeer at uni-goettingen.de>, and apparently not Cc'ed to thelist, MathSoft has some downloadable docs on its Web server; they can be found at: http://www.splus.mathsoft.com/splus/splssupport/library.htm Best wishes to all, Emmanuel Paradis -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
I have been really trying to resist commenting on this thread. I plan to write documentation - with whoever wants to help - for the use of R in psychology. I have been resisting because it is like vaporware to announce an intention. But I gave in to temptation just to let readers of this list know that some people ARE thinking about this. Right now I'm swamped and can't do it. It is one of the things I want to do this summer. Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jbaron -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
hi> Sorry, I was wrong. I am using R ver. 0.90.1 (1999, December). > Is it possible if this is the source of troubles? I will try > using R ver. 1.0.0 (from woody of Debian/GNU Linux package) > in near future.aha ! This is the problem. The Hershey fonts were not in version 0.90.1 You will need to get hold of version 1.0.0 paul -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
OK, here goes. After some e-mailing, I''d like to invite any R-newbies (or ex-newbies with good memories) to send their "simple problem(s) that drove me crazy when I started using R". The idea is to produce a short (?) introduction to R for those wanting to accomplish fairly prosaic tasks. Jim -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Prof Brian D Ripley
2000-May-09 05:46 UTC
(GUIs, was R GUI ( was Re: [R] R Documentation(s)))
I''ve changed the subject line: this is not about the R GUI as presently exists (on Windows and GNOME). On Tue, 9 May 2000, Paul E. Johnson wrote:> Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote: > > > > Actually, I think there are valid reasons for people to want GUI > > interfaces to statistics. One argument that I hear frequently is that > > nonstatisticians tend to do other things than analyse data for > > extended periods of time, and it becomes difficult to remember the > > formalities from one time to the next. So they get scared of the > > prospect of staring empty-minded at the R prompt. > > > > As long as you can turn the GUI *off* and use R as usual, I see no > > reason not to have some form of GUI. > > I used SAS to produce some reports that I couldn''t make R generate. > Perhaps R can, I couldn''t see how. The reports from SAS PROC TABULATE > summarize about 100 variables, showing the means & other summaries for > subgroups to allow a side-by side comparison. I had not used SAS for > several editions, but in edition 8 they have a thing called "Analyst" > where you can point and click on various anaysis/graph types and it > generates a code template, which you can then grab, copy, edit, etc. > The SAS manuals are, well, almost impossible to understand. Take a look > at the writup on PROC TABULATE if you don''t know what I mean. But with > analyst, they had a few templates for tables, and I could get the code > for them, and get what I wanted after that. > > That kind of thing is very useful because the "infrequent user" often > will not know that a function exists to do something, but he can take a > code example and put it to use. I don''t have many good things to say > about SPSS, but they do have the (seldom used) feature that can generate > code for every gui step you take and a facility to edit and run these > "scripts".Um. In all the statistical GUIs I have used (including those two and S_PLUS) the menu/dialogs interface shows you only a part of what can be done. (Actually, I think in SPSS for Windows it is all that can be done, but SPSS itself can do more.) So my experience is the other way round: I know it can be done, but I can''t find out how from the GUI and as GUIs are supposed to me self-explanatory, no other documentation is to hand.> One of the most intimidating things about R is the seeming endlessness > of it. I''ve fiddled with it since version 0.64 or so, and I''ve > contributed RPMs for the hdf5 data format in R, so I''m not completely > dead weight (just mostly so). But after all this time I don''t quite > have a mental image of its capabilities and boundaries. A GUI helps > people to see what can be done and how it might fit together.Only in things a lot less powerful than R.> It has helped me a great deal that some of the kind people in this list > post R sample programs that they use with their classes. I find I learn > an awful lot by trying to make them work. In the short term, a list of > these pedagogical resources will do a lot more good than anything else.I think you are overlooking (the quite explicit statement) that R''s capabilities are more or less equal to those of S, and there are extensive accounts of S''s view of the world (not least books by Bill Venables & I!). In short, you are ignoring the main pedagogical resources, things called books. Remember that there is product `not unlike R'' that does have an extensive menu/dialogs front-end, so the pros and cons of GUI to S are not unexplored. And I am in favour of one for R, but I do not give it high priority. (It really would be man-months of work.) We would need to sort out a cross-platform GUI interface design and have that running first or one ends up with a Windows-only GUI (as happened with all the examples above). -- Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272860 (secr) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
> > > formalities from one time to the next. So they get scared of the > > > prospect of staring empty-minded at the R prompt.> Remember that there is product `not unlike R'' that does have an extensive > menu/dialogs front-end, so the pros and cons of GUI to S are not > unexplored. And I am in favour of one for R, but I do not give it high > priority. (It really would be man-months of work.) We would need to sort > out a cross-platform GUI interface design and have that running first or > one ends up with a Windows-only GUI (as happened with all the examples > above).Personally I''m against GUI''s - particularly for teaching, but can appreciate why people who are occasional users may wish to have one. I think that what we are really describing here is an assisted batch type processing, where one gets menu items more as a reminder as to what sort of things are availible for each task. One of the easiest interfaces I have seen was the old DOS SPSS (V4 I think) which had menus which when an item was selected would produce a dialogue for the function allowing the user to enter parameters. Upon closure the dialogue would shut pasting the appropriate command line into the scratch-pad. The scratch-pad would then act as a batch file. This led to an easy uptake of batch file composition. As I remember there was also an object listing from which objects could be selected as function dialogue items. Any thoughts, David. ******************************************************************** Dr. David Lucy Department of Archaeological Sciences University of Bradford Bradford West Yorkshire BD7 1DP UK tel. +44 01274 233556 fax. +44 01274 235190 ******************************************************************** -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
"Paul E. Johnson" <pauljohn at ukans.edu> writes:> Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote: > > > > Actually, I think there are valid reasons for people to want GUI > > interfaces to statistics. One argument that I hear frequently is that > > nonstatisticians tend to do other things than analyse data for > > extended periods of time, and it becomes difficult to remember the > > formalities from one time to the next. So they get scared of the > > prospect of staring empty-minded at the R prompt. > > > > As long as you can turn the GUI *off* and use R as usual, I see no > > reason not to have some form of GUI. > > I used SAS to produce some reports that I couldn''t make R generate. > Perhaps R can, I couldn''t see how.It usually can, but not without end-user programming...> The reports from SAS PROC TABULATE > summarize about 100 variables, showing the means & other summaries for > subgroups to allow a side-by side comparison.Yes, this is the kind of thing SAS is really good for. In R you''d end up with stuff like data(airquality) attach(airquality) do.call("cbind",lapply(airquality, tapply, Month, mean, na.rm=T)) or (except for some field width trouble) by(airquality, Month, function(d) sapply(d, mean, na.rm=T)) If people need this kind of functionality we should probably consider including more of it. The real problem would seem to be more in the interface specification than in the actual table generation. As usual, contributions are welcome. On the other hand this kind of report might be better handled by an actual database system - R easily gets in trouble just by storing data frames with hundreds of variables.> I had not used SAS for > several editions, but in edition 8 they have a thing called "Analyst" > where you can point and click on various anaysis/graph types and it > generates a code template, which you can then grab, copy, edit, etc.This mode of operation would probably also be what we''d want in a full-blown R GUI. The scratchpad notion also needs to come in somewhere, the line-based interface has some shortcomings (we have it in ESS, but then people would have to learn emacs).> The SAS manuals are, well, almost impossible to understand. Take a look > at the writup on PROC TABULATE if you don''t know what I mean. But with > analyst, they had a few templates for tables, and I could get the code > for them, and get what I wanted after that.I have to disagree on the SAS manuals there. Dauntingly verbose they are, but unintelligible, not in my experience. And yes, examples are a good thing. One of the problems we have with the current documentation is that neither the demos nor the help page examples work really well for getting users acquainted with the basic modes of operations. Interactive tutorials may be the ticket, but they have to be written first. I''m a little less sure that displaying R function calls are quite enough for the new user (and for some things to work in a GUI, we might have to include ugly and complicated constructions to avoid having the GUI fall in the same pitfalls as users do.) [snip]> One of the most intimidating things about R is the seeming endlessness > of it. I''ve fiddled with it since version 0.64 or so, and I''ve > contributed RPMs for the hdf5 data format in R, so I''m not completely > dead weight (just mostly so). But after all this time I don''t quite > have a mental image of its capabilities and boundaries. A GUI helps > people to see what can be done and how it might fit together.Well, yes, but... One slightly arrogant way of saying it is "R is a programming language, it''s *supposed* to be endless". GUIs generally work by creating a bounded universe, which can be mapped, and therefore inevitably limit the user. That being said, there are quite a few "neat tricks" and programming paradigms that don''t really dawn upon users until very late in their development. The use of the *apply functions for one thing and the conventions for model objects, summary and print methods for another. -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard Blegdamsvej 3 c/ /''_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics 2200 Cph. N (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
I''m following up, just a bit late... :-) On Tue, 9 May 2000, Prof Brian D Ripley wrote:>> Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote: >> > >> > Actually, I think there are valid reasons for people to want GUI >> > interfaces to statistics.There most certainly are.>> >One argument that I hear frequently is that >> > nonstatisticians tend to do other things than analyse data for >> > extended periods of time, and it becomes difficult to remember the >> > formalities from one time to the next. So they get scared of the >> > prospect of staring empty-minded at the R prompt.Well, I''m not a statistician by any standards, the most advanced thing I ever did in a course was glm(formula = kyphosis ~ al + an + sa, family = binomial(link = "logit"), data = data), but of course, since I am an astrophysicist, I''m pretty used to programming, command-line interfaces etc. But, as Prof Ripley says:>Um. In all the statistical GUIs I have used (including those two and >S_PLUS) the menu/dialogs interface shows you only a part of what can be >done. (Actually, I think in SPSS for Windows it is all that can be done, >but SPSS itself can do more.) So my experience is the other way round: I >know it can be done, but I can''t find out how from the GUI and as GUIs are >supposed to me self-explanatory, no other documentation is to hand.it is far from easy to find the things you want in menu systems. If you haven''t understood the concepts, the path to doing what you need may in fact be shorter at a command line: Take for example my glm above. I may think that I should be looking under "hypothesis testing". I mean, there are levels of significanse and everything, you now. :-) I will not find anything there in a menu system under "hypothesis testing", I might find it under "regression". On the other hand, with a piece of well written documentation, I might not only find the glm()-function more swiftly, I might also realize that I wasn''t really doing hypothesis testing. I''m not against a GUI for R, but I think that well written documentation intended for beginners of different fields of the command line interface is far more urgent, and is something I think would attract beginners to R. There are of course certain operations that could be performed more easily with a GUI. For example, if I have a figure on the X-device, doing a right-click on the figure to get a pop-up menu that lets me send it to a postscript device or a different file (blurring the distinction) would be great. But not urgent. In general, I think that a GUI may be nice if the options you have are few, but if the options you have are many, then it is just a barrier between you and the really powerful stuff. The GUI may be designed to help you do tasks that are common, but if you are doing things that are somewhat out of the mainstream, even simple operations may be difficult to perform. Best, Kjetil -- Kjetil Kjernsmo Graduate astronomy-student Problems worthy of attack University of Oslo, Norway Prove their worth by hitting back E-mail: kjetikj at astro.uio.no - Piet Hein Homepage <URL:http://www.astro.uio.no/~kjetikj/> Webmaster at skepsis.no -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Prof Brian D Ripley
2000-May-12 16:56 UTC
(GUIs, was R GUI ( was Re: [R] R Documentation(s)))
On Fri, 12 May 2000, Kjetil Kjernsmo wrote:> There are of course certain operations that could be performed more easily > with a GUI. For example, if I have a figure on the X-device, doing a > right-click on the figure to get a pop-up menu that lets me send it to a > postscript device or a different file (blurring the distinction) would be > great. But not urgent.And of course the Windows version already has such things, and replaying of plots and .... The problem I see is that we need to assume a toolkit for X (e.g. Motif) to make programming such things feasible in a finite time. I am working on the feasibility of porting the R for Windows GUI to Motif, and others are looking at other GUI routes. -- Brian D. Ripley, ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk Professor of Applied Statistics, http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/ University of Oxford, Tel: +44 1865 272861 (self) 1 South Parks Road, +44 1865 272860 (secr) Oxford OX1 3TG, UK Fax: +44 1865 272595 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- r-help mailing list -- Read http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html Send "info", "help", or "[un]subscribe" (in the "body", not the subject !) To: r-help-request at stat.math.ethz.ch _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._