Dear All, This is a question to sound out possibilities. I am with the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Western Australia, representing a few of the more statistically minded in the faculty. Essentially, there have been problems in the past with software support, changing over statistical software, and paying lots of money for it. In R you have an advanced statistical software package, it is free and it is adaptable. Also the maths department at UWA is using it on an informal basis and so support over the long term is available. The only reason why the faculty is not using R as a whole is because there is no GUI equivalent to Minitab/SPLUS/Genstat in R that can be used for undergraduate teaching purposes (unless I'm seriously mistaken). In RWindows there is the GUI, but it is not designed to carry statistical functions with buttons for options and this is what is needed for low statistical level undergrads. There is RWeb, but at this stage of development you wont find many takers in the faculty. What I want to know is this: can anyone give me a quote on what it will cost to develop a RWindows clone of the Minitab GUI. This GUI would support initially the simple six (EDA, probabilities and quantiles of distributions, t-tests,one-way anova, chi-square, and simple linear regression), and have the potential to develop into the next level of statistical analysis (glms, multivariate methods, time series and spatial - analytical problems common across our faculty). If the cost of development is comparable to present licence maintenance fees at FNAS then I think our small group can argue for its adoption. Not only that, the benefits to undergraduate teaching in other universities would be immense. If development costs are high then other faculties at other universities, where the software licencing arrangements are also troublesome, are also invited to participate in this potential project. I imagine this question has been discussed before, but I hope to have but an interesting turn to it. Regards Rohan Sadler Ecosystems Research Group School of Plant Biology (Botany) Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences +61 8 9380 7914 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Rohan, You are right - we have had this discussion before. I think the last time I participated in it we had reached the stage where the only GUI to R would be on the lines of the old SPSS `scratch pad' affair, which was more just a guide to the SPSS functions, but no more. I think the problem is that most users of R tend to be in research, or have a requirement for flexability from a suitably heavyweight language. Few using R are unfamilier with programming at some level and really for these people there is no need to have anything other than the command interpreter. One only has to look at what has happenned to Splus to see the deletarious effects of encroaching gooiness - I'm fine with the unix command line version of Splus, but get utterly lost with the Windows version. Having said that R is flexible enough for people to write their own GUI type applications for specific functions. I have done it myself for the forensic scientists who need simple to operate sample size estimation functions (see - http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~dlucy/software.html). These operate in both Windows and Unix R environments from icons on the desktop - they're not perfect, but do perform adequately. Rather than some generalised GU interface to R you would probably be better off writing a specific package to do exactly what you want it to do - the examples above took about 2 weeks each and a week or so to get familiar enough with Tcl to get by. I can only speak for myself, but would urge the R developers not to go any further down the GUI path than they have already done with the Windows version to avoid the user base becomming split into GUI people and command interpreter people who view R in essentially different ways. Regards, David. ********************************************************************** ** Dr. David Lucy ** ** Department of Mathematics and Statistics ** ** The University of Edinburgh ** ** James Clerk Maxwell Building ** ** King's Buildings ** ** Mayfield Road ** ** Edinburgh ** ** EH9 3JZ ** ** ** ** tel: 0131 650 5057 ** ** extension: 505057 ** ** e-mail: dlucy at maths.ed.ac.uk ** ** web: http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~dlucy/ ** ** ** ** Truncated address: ** ** ** ** Dr. David Lucy ** ** Department of Mathematics ** ** JCMB ** ** King's Buildings ** ** Edinburgh University ** ** Edinburgh ** ** EH9 3JZ ** ********************************************************************** -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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, 25 Jun 2002 17:31:08 +0800 Rohan Sadler <rsadler at agric.uwa.edu.au> wrote:> Dear All, > > This is a question to sound out possibilities. > > I am with the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the > University of Western Australia, representing a few of the more > statistically minded in the faculty. Essentially, there have been > problems in the past with software support, changing over statistical > software, and paying lots of money for it. In R you have an advanced > statistical software package, it is free and it is adaptable. Also the > maths department at UWA is using it on an informal basis and so support > over the long term is available. The only reason why the faculty is not > using R as a whole is because there is no GUI equivalent to > Minitab/SPLUS/Genstat in R that can be used for undergraduate teaching > purposes (unless I'm seriously mistaken). In RWindows there is the GUI, > but it is not designed to carry statistical functions with buttons for > options and this is what is needed for low statistical level undergrads. > There is RWeb, but at this stage of development you wont find many > takers in the faculty. > > What I want to know is this: can anyone give me a quote on what it will > cost to develop a RWindows clone of the Minitab GUI. This GUI would > support initially the simple six (EDA, probabilities and quantiles of > distributions, t-tests,one-way anova, chi-square, and simple linear > regression), and have the potential to develop into the next level of > statistical analysis (glms, multivariate methods, time series and > spatial - analytical problems common across our faculty). If the cost of > development is comparable to present licence maintenance fees at FNAS > then I think our small group can argue for its adoption. Not only that, > the benefits to undergraduate teaching in other universities would be > immense. If development costs are high then other faculties at other > universities, where the software licencing arrangements are also > troublesome, are also invited to participate in this potential project. > > I imagine this question has been discussed before, but I hope to have > but an interesting turn to it. > > Regards > > Rohan Sadler > Ecosystems Research Group > School of Plant Biology (Botany) > Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences > > +61 8 9380 7914 > > -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- > 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 teach new students using primarily commands. The first 3 weeks are tough, but then the use of commands over GUIs starts to pay off. So I don't think it is worth a major effort to implement GUIs, and the GUIs would always lag behind R development. A better approach would be to implement the most often needed analyses on a Web server using R and Perl etc. See http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat/teaching/statcomp for links to some good examples (although for more complex analyses than you need). -Frank -- Frank E Harrell Jr Prof. of Biostatistics & Statistics Div. of Biostatistics & Epidem. Dept. of Health Evaluation Sciences U. Virginia School of Medicine http://hesweb1.med.virginia.edu/biostat -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
At the University of Auckland R is taught to second year undergraduate students. I could still remember when I was first introduced to R as an undergraduate in the second year data analysis class (which was quite a few years ago!), at the beginning I found it challenging, but later on I fell in love with its command line interface. In fact, the way the Department of Statistics teaches R here is for lecturers to teach the commands in class (i.e. on the board/OHP), then send the students off to the labs with assignments, and if they have any questions, lab demonstrators are always around to help. When I was a student I found it is the easiet way to master R; and now being a demonstrator I found students find it easy to learn, when there is someone around to help when they have trouble. Most of them have no command-line experience before (as at first year they were taught Excel and Minitab), but they manage to learn at least the basics at the end. I think the question is not whether the undergraduates can handle a command-line programme, but rather "how" it is taught. R is even taught in a new first year visualisation course at our department here and students still manage to learn it quite well (some even learnt how to write basic functions). As for a GUI interface, I think the current GUI in Windows is good enough. I prefer to run my scripts in a single BATCH file most of the time anyways. Cheers, Ko-Kang Wang ------------------------------------------------ Ko-Kang Kevin Wang Post Graduate PGDipSci Student Department of Statistics University of Auckland New Zealand www.stat.auckand.ac.nz/~kwan022 -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 Folks, I'm sorry I missed this message. Myself and a Professor at a California university are currently designing a simplified R GUI that is targeted at Linux, FreeBSD, MacOSX, and Windows and will provide an interface to doing "canned" procedures and project based operations. I'm currently building the initial interface design and then we will start a project on sourceforge for it. The project will be opensource and used to teach MBA students in statistics courses. The tentative name for it is obveRsive woRkbench, and it is currently way to early to even guess at a release date or even if the project is actually feasible. Since the project will be open source, I'm hoping to get a few collaborators on it (hint hint). It will be hosted on sourceforge or an equivalent when we are ready. We are planning to do the following: 1. Have various output viewing capabilites, but mostly an HTML/graphics viewer. 2. Project based operation, where students can organize their work by projects. 3. Very simple data editing capabilities for different data types. 4. Dynamic "canned" routines with point-and-click-fill-in-dummy-form operations. The routines will be extendable, so you'll be able to add your own when you need. 5. Using the CRAN update/install facility to make it easy to install new obveRsive packages. 6. Utilizing a cross platform GUI system, either FLTK or wxWindows in C++ or Java (depending on which is easier and more stable). 7. Heavily user tested with a focus on usability, targeting students and regular folks, not professors of statistics :-) Any commments on this are more than welcome, and we'll be announcing it officially soon. Zed A. Shaw University of British Columbia On 6/25/02 2:31 AM, "Rohan Sadler" <rsadler at agric.uwa.edu.au> wrote:> Dear All, > > This is a question to sound out possibilities. > > I am with the Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences at the > University of Western Australia, representing a few of the more > statistically minded in the faculty. Essentially, there have been > problems in the past with software support, changing over statistical > software, and paying lots of money for it. In R you have an advanced > statistical software package, it is free and it is adaptable. Also the > maths department at UWA is using it on an informal basis and so support > over the long term is available. The only reason why the faculty is not > using R as a whole is because there is no GUI equivalent to > Minitab/SPLUS/Genstat in R that can be used for undergraduate teaching > purposes (unless I'm seriously mistaken). In RWindows there is the GUI, > but it is not designed to carry statistical functions with buttons for > options and this is what is needed for low statistical level undergrads. > There is RWeb, but at this stage of development you wont find many > takers in the faculty. > > What I want to know is this: can anyone give me a quote on what it will > cost to develop a RWindows clone of the Minitab GUI. This GUI would > support initially the simple six (EDA, probabilities and quantiles of > distributions, t-tests,one-way anova, chi-square, and simple linear > regression), and have the potential to develop into the next level of > statistical analysis (glms, multivariate methods, time series and > spatial - analytical problems common across our faculty). If the cost of > development is comparable to present licence maintenance fees at FNAS > then I think our small group can argue for its adoption. Not only that, > the benefits to undergraduate teaching in other universities would be > immense. If development costs are high then other faculties at other > universities, where the software licencing arrangements are also > troublesome, are also invited to participate in this potential project. > > I imagine this question has been discussed before, but I hope to have > but an interesting turn to it. > > Regards > > Rohan Sadler > Ecosystems Research Group > School of Plant Biology (Botany) > Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences > > +61 8 9380 7914 > >-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.> -> 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 >_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._.> _ -- Zed A. Shaw -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._