R help - Feb 2005 - Teaching R in 40 minutes. What should be included?

If _you_ were asked to give a 40 minute dog and pony show about R for
a group of scientists ranging from physicists to geographers what
would you put in? These people want to know what R can do.

I'm thinking about something like:

A. Overview
B. data structures
C. arithmetic and manipulation
D. reading data
E. linear models using glm
F. graphics
G. programming
H. other tricks like rpart or time series analysis?

Thoughts? Other people must do similar things all the time. Is there a
repository of intro to R slide shows anywhere?

On Friday 25 February 2005 22:37, Dr Carbon wrote:
> If _you_ were asked to give a 40 minute dog and pony show about R for
> a group of scientists ranging from physicists to geographers what
> would you put in? These people want to know what R can do.
>
> I'm thinking about something like:
>
> A. Overview
> B. data structures
> C. arithmetic and manipulation
> D. reading data
> E. linear models using glm
> F. graphics
> G. programming
> H. other tricks like rpart or time series analysis?
>
> Thoughts? Other people must do similar things all the time. Is there
> a repository of intro to R slide shows anywhere?
>
Just my .02$

- examples of pictures Excel is unable to produce
  (Boxplots, lattice graphics, see the recent discussion here
  for examples)
- links to databases and Excel
- an example of the (l)apply function for programmers
- links to GIS (GRASS, ArcInfo) for Geographers
- examples of spatial analysis package
- compare the price tags (students and scientists can use
  it (legally!) everywhere without going to jail 8-),
  no dongles, licence servers and limitiations of the size
  of data sets.

I would focus on the workflow of data in science and
demonstrate how this is handled in R. Perhaps
the outline should have less science and more marketing 8-)

Greetings,

Georg 

-- 
Georg Hoermann, Fachabteilung Wasserwirtschaft / Dep. Hydrology  
Ecosystem Research Center, Kiel University, Germany, Penguin #189476
Tel. 0431-880-1207, 0172/4315715, ICQ: 348340729, MSN: hlschorsch

Hello,

Am Freitag, 25. Februar 2005 22:37 schrieb Dr Carbon:
> If _you_ were asked to give a 40 minute dog and pony show about R
> for a group of scientists ranging from physicists to geographers
> what would you put in? These people want to know what R can do.
>
> I'm thinking about something like:
>
> A. Overview
> B. data structures
> C. arithmetic and manipulation
> D. reading data
> E. linear models using glm
> F. graphics
> G. programming
> H. other tricks like rpart or time series analysis?
If your audience is well known I would be inclined to target some 
(simple) examples derived from physics and geography to demonstrate 
basic ideas of working with R, similar like the ones listed above.

Well, 40 minutes are not too long, so I recommend to simplify your 
presentation as much as you can. You want teach them R in 40 minutes 
but rather tend to confuse them if you don't shorten your plan a bit.
I.E. teaching programming in R in a few minutes for scientists who are 
not at all acustomed to programming  is much overhead, I think.
Well, it's up to your estimation on what is expected to follow your 
presentation. If you are sure that most of them know enough 
programming to unterstand the basic concepts in R-programming, 
everything will be fine!
If not, I'd recommend  to concentrate on basic operations (data 
structures, arithmetic and manipulation, import/export data and some 
often used default statistical procedures demonstrating common tasks 
(is time series analysis important in physics or geography, I don't 
know??), including some remarks on diffenrences to widespread 
statistical packages like SPSS or SAS, maybe LispStat.
Finally there shouuld be some extended view of available ressources 
(manuals, FAQ, community) as a starter to learn, use and program R by 
themselves.
I think this would do for a 40 minutes presentation without taking the 
risk to deter people due to overcomplexity.

regards
Thomas