After 25 years of using SPSS syntax
I am having some problems adapting to
R. It would be a huge help for people
like myself to have an introductory
help document, like "R for SPSS Users".
Such a document would jump start SPSS users
by covering the use of the foreign function
to read ".sav" files, then show equivalent R
syntax for the most common SPSS procedures.
Once I achieve a degree of proficiency with
R I will attempt to draft the SPSS to R
help document, but maybe someone out there
is already able to make it.
Much of my difficulty as an R novice is
confusion over data types required by
functions. Some accept vectors, others
matrices or data.frames. An SPSS to R
help document would spell out where the
".sav" data files, read in as data.frames,
would need to extract vectors or define
matrices to apply common functions such
as aov, t.test, and glm.
One of the first things I wanted to do
with R was create bar charts with 95% CI.
I was very pleased to find barplot2 (in
gregmisc). Unfortunately I was completely
stymied when the example used faked CIs!
The SPSS to R document would walk users
through such a task, assuming a data.frame
read in from a ".sav" file.
A big thank you to all who contribute
to this great software.
Harold Baize
Butte County Department of Behavior Health
Youth Services
