Hi, Have you seen the tcltk package? I believe it is a better option than the one you outline in your message. Why develop a Windows-only GUI? Maybe in a few years your teaching department will give up Windows for Linux (for the reasons you wrote about R: it is free, advanced, and adaptable). There is an article in R News (vol.1, n?3) by Peter Dalgaard on the tcltk package, and the latter includes a few nice examples. You need to install Tcl/Tk: it is free and can run on many OSs. BTW, are GUIs the best way to teach stats? I recommend newcomers to R to save their command lines in a text file in order to able to source() them later. Quite often you need to re-do an analysis, because you have new data, you want to change a parameter, fit new models, ... Emmanuel Paradis At 17:31 25/06/02 +0800, you 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 >_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._> >-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 R-enthusiastic followers: I am using R in graduate and undergraduate curses, and yes... most of the people think that R will be better with a GUI. But as they start to use it, and find why is better to use commands (and store those commands for further use as SCRIPTS) they understand the way R is created. Furthermore, for teaching goals it make the people to think what they are doing before they write any command. I think it will be very interesting to create a GUI for R to attract more people to use R and to spread it. But I think at this stage it will be better to continue improving the core and packages of R to convert it in the best solid and comprehensive statistical software. And if there is the possibility to create a group to start a small and basic GUI as a package I will like to help in that project. Have a nice R-day! Kenneth -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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, Emmanuel Paradis wrote:> Hi, > > Have you seen the tcltk package? I believe it is a better option than the > one you outline in your message. Why develop a Windows-only GUI? Maybe in a > few years your teaching department will give up Windows for Linux (for the > reasons you wrote about R: it is free, advanced, and adaptable). There is > an article in R News (vol.1, n°3) by Peter Dalgaard on the tcltk package, > and the latter includes a few nice examples. You need to install Tcl/Tk: it > is free and can run on many OSs.Well it can run under a few OSes, principally Motif-based X11 and Windows. (It does not run on classical MacOS with R.) But the chief drawback is look-and-feel: Windows users have very high expectations of the uniformity of their interface. A secondary one is the difficulty of coordinating two event-driven systems. (Some of) the R developers would love to be able to provide a high-quality cross-platform GUI interface. There are various possible starting points (Java and wxWindows being the others most frequently mentioned). But it is thought to be a large job.> BTW, are GUIs the best way to teach stats? I recommend newcomers to R to > save their command lines in a text file in order to able to source() them > later. Quite often you need to re-do an analysis, because you have new > data, you want to change a parameter, fit new models, ...A GUI can be a good way to write command lines for you. The discussions here are all about support: Minitab abd SPSS are used for basic courses just because no one needs to write any documentation nor provide any hand-holding.> > Emmanuel Paradis > > At 17:31 25/06/02 +0800, you 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 > >_._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._ > ._._ > > > > > -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- > 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 > _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._ >-- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
Maybe something of wider value than a GUI (for teaching and other purposes) could be an interface like that in Mathematica (and Maple?), which supports mathematical notation and plots in a command window. This allows showing students exactly what they need to do to accomplish some task, and well as the all the output they should see. -- Tony Plate -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._
> BTW, are GUIs the best way to teach stats? I recommend newcomers to R to > save their command lines in a text file in order to able to source() them > later. Quite often you need to re-do an analysis, because you have new > data, you want to change a parameter, fit new models, ... > > Emmanuel ParadisYes yes yes... the time I've spent (read 'wasted') looking over students' shoulders while they umm ("click!") & ahh ("click!") their way through what they _thought_ they did last week in SPSS, which 'didn't work', has convinced me that GUIs are a lousy way to 'debug' someone else's faulty analysis... not to mention the time I've saved returning to an R script 6 months on, which then 'talks' me through how I'd got to where I'd got to... Stuart Dr Stuart Leask MA MRCPsych, Clinical Lecturer in Psychiatry University of Nottingham Dept of Psychiatry, Duncan Macmillan House Porchester Road, Nottingham. NG3 6AA. UK http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/psychiatry/staff/sjl.html -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- 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 _._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._._