This email isn't asking for assistance, but I thought R-help readers would find it interesting. This week we offered a half-day introduction to R for researchers at Augsburg University. The response was astonishing. Although Augsburg has no medical faculty and no engineers, there was far too much demand, with interest from every faculty (barring theology, "for one small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the R invaders" --- perhaps that should be obdurate rather than indomitable) and we had participants from computer science, geography, physics, law, linguistics, education, sociology, marketing, psychology, finance, ... The course itself went very well. We encouraged people to bring their laptops and work in groups. Using JGR as the interface to R helped a lot, as it was easier for people to load their own data and use the help. Of course, JGR is compulsory in Augsburg. Giving everyone a Butterbreze (a local delicacy) halfway through may have contributed to the good humour of the course as well! Statistics doesn't always have a positive image. I can recommend running an R course as one way of making a good impression. Antony Unwin Professor of Computer-Oriented Statistics and Data Analysis, Mathematics Institute, University of Augsburg, 86135 Augsburg, Germany Tel: + 49 821 5982218 http://stats.math.uni-augsburg.de/ [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
Antony Unwin wrote:> This email isn't asking for assistance, but I thought R-help readers > would find it interesting. This week we offered a half-day > introduction to R for researchers at Augsburg University. The > response was astonishing. Although Augsburg has no medical faculty > and no engineers, there was far too much demand, with interest from > every faculty (barring theology, "for one small village of indomitable > Gauls still holds out against the R invaders" --- perhaps that should > be obdurate rather than indomitable) and we had participants from > computer science, geography, physics, law, linguistics, education, > sociology, marketing, psychology, finance, ... > > The course itself went very well. We encouraged people to bring their > laptops and work in groups. Using JGR as the interface to R helped a > lot, as it was easier for people to load their own data and use the > help. Of course, JGR is compulsory in Augsburg. Giving everyone a > Butterbreze (a local delicacy) halfway through may have contributed to > the good humour of the course as well! > > Statistics doesn't always have a positive image. I can recommend > running an R course as one way of making a good impression. > > > Antony Unwin > Professor of Computer-Oriented Statistics and Data Analysis, > Mathematics Institute, > University of Augsburg, > 86135 Augsburg, Germany > Tel: + 49 821 5982218 > http://stats.math.uni-augsburg.de/ >This is great to hear Antony, and you did a very nice job in setting up the workshop. Terri Scott in our department runs an R clinic each week in which anyone at the university can bring questions. We have had physicians, psychologists, and sociologists show up. This kind of interest is gratifying. For your audience I also suggest using R Commander. Frank -- Frank E Harrell Jr Professor and Chair School of Medicine Department of Biostatistics Vanderbilt University
Antony Unwin wrote: .....................> The course itself went very well. We encouraged people to bring their > laptops and work in groups. Using JGR as the interface to R helped a > lot, as it was easier for people to load their own data and use the > help. Of course, JGR is compulsory in Augsburg. Giving everyone a > Butterbreze (a local delicacy) halfway through may have contributed to > the good humour of the course as well!I apologize for my ignorance, but what is JGR? Tom
http://stats.math.uni-augsburg.de/JGR/ Obviously a shameless product plug :) --- Tom Backer Johnsen <backer at psych.uib.no> wrote:> Antony Unwin wrote: > > ..................... > > > > The course itself went very well. We encouraged > people to bring their > > laptops and work in groups. Using JGR as the > interface to R helped a > > lot, as it was easier for people to load their own > data and use the > > help. Of course, JGR is compulsory in Augsburg. > Giving everyone a > > Butterbreze (a local delicacy) halfway through may > have contributed to > > the good humour of the course as well! > > I apologize for my ignorance, but what is JGR? > > Tom > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide > http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, > reproducible code. >
Antony Unwin wrote:> ... > > The course itself went very well. We encouraged people to bring their > laptops and work in groups. Using JGR as the interface to R helped a > lot, as it was easier for people to load their own data and use the > help. Of course, JGR is compulsory in Augsburg. >Speaking of JGR... What are the appropriate channels to complain and/or contribute? I had looked into it at an earlier point (on Fedora Linux) and got stuck on some fairly simple usability issues, like font choice and color scheme. Things like - if you select a bigger font, the window size remains the same. Changes to window size do not survive to subsequent invokations. - output is quite unreadable in proportional fonts, so why make them available? - some fonts have poor contrast, but there seems to be no way to select boldface versions. - the latest version has turned to a blue-on-gray scheme, which doesn't help with the contrast either This is all pretty trivial stuff, but the bottom line is that all the really exciting stuff isn't really of much use if students cannot read it in the back rows. A couple other maybe not all that trivial things to do is to improve the data import (it is losing out on most of the things that I tried) and to get the wires connected between the DataTable and the edit() command. best -pd -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907
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