R help - Jan 2006 - Easy, Robust and Stable GUI???

I know that this isn't really a R help question, but I am a psychology
student at TRU (tru.ca) and my psych department is going to be switching
statistical software in the near future.  I thought this might be a good
oppertunity to advocate for open source if an acceptable option is available.  I
have looked around a bit and R seems to be the most stable and mature (not to
mention powerful) open source statistical program going.  The only downfall is
that the school has been using spss for years and would demand a similarly user
friendly GUI based statistical program to replace it.  I have looked at a few of
the R guis and most of them look like they are just command line interfaces in
pretty desktop windows and not really a gui like spss.  If anyone knows of any
stable, userfriendly and robust guis for R that would be similar to using spss
please let me know, as I would love for my school to start embracing open source
software.

Thanks

Pat
--
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On Mon, 23 Jan 2006 12:44:49 -0800 (PST) pat_primate (sent by
Nabble.com) wrote:
> I know that this isn't really a R help question, but I am a
> psychology student at TRU (tru.ca) and my psych department is going
> to be switching statistical software in the near future.  I thought
> this might be a good oppertunity to advocate for open source if an
> acceptable option is available.  I have looked around a bit and R
> seems to be the most stable and mature (not to mention powerful) open
> source statistical program going.  The only downfall is that the
> school has been using spss for years and would demand a similarly
> user friendly GUI based statistical program to replace it.  I have
> looked at a few of the R guis and most of them look like they are
> just command line interfaces in pretty desktop windows and not really
> a gui like spss.  If anyone knows of any stable, userfriendly and
> robust guis for R that would be similar to using spss please let me
> know, as I would love for my school to start embracing open source
> software.
Have you looked at John Fox's "Rcmdr" package?
See
  http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/
and
  John Fox (2005). "The R Commander: A Basic-Statistics Graphical User
  Interface to R", Journal of Statistical Software, 14(9). URL
  http://www.jstatsoft.org/

Also look at http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/ for an overview of other
GUI projects.

Best,
Z
> Thanks
> 
> Pat
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://www.nabble.com/Easy%2C-Robust-and-Stable-GUI--t982193.html#a2543480
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> 
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> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
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> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
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>

Pat,

For your own good, use the script. Once script's done, you just reuse the
same script every year to each your students.

How sweet is that! ^_^.

On 1/23/06, pat_primate (sent by Nabble.com) <lists@nabble.com>
wrote:
>
>
> I know that this isn't really a R help question, but I am a psychology
> student at TRU (tru.ca) and my psych department is going to be switching
> statistical software in the near future.  I thought this might be a good
> oppertunity to advocate for open source if an acceptable option is
> available.  I have looked around a bit and R seems to be the most stable
and
> mature (not to mention powerful) open source statistical program going. 
The
> only downfall is that the school has been using spss for years and would
> demand a similarly user friendly GUI based statistical program to replace
> it.  I have looked at a few of the R guis and most of them look like they
> are just command line interfaces in pretty desktop windows and not really a
> gui like spss.  If anyone knows of any stable, userfriendly and robust guis
> for R that would be similar to using spss please let me know, as I would
> love for my school to start embracing open source software.
>
> Thanks
>
> Pat
> --
> View this message in context:
> http://www.nabble.com/Easy%2C-Robust-and-Stable-GUI--t982193.html#a2543480
> Sent from the R help forum at Nabble.com.
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help@stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide!
> http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>


--
WenSui Liu
(http://statcompute.blogspot.com)
Senior Decision Support Analyst
Health Policy and Clinical Effectiveness
Cincinnati Children Hospital Medical Center

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pat_primate (sent by Nabble.com <lists <at> nabble.com> writes:
> I know that this isn't really a R help question, but I am a psychology 
student at TRU (tru.ca) and my psych
> department is going to be switching statistical software in the near 
future.  I thought this might be a good
> oppertunity to advocate for open source if an acceptable option is 
available.  I have looked around a bit
> and R seems to be the most stable and mature (not to mention powerful) open
source statistical program
> going.  The only downfall is that the school has been using spss for years 
and would demand a similarly user
> friendly GUI based statistical program to replace it.  I have looked at a 
few of the R guis and most of them
> look like they are just command line interfaces in pretty desktop windows 
and not really a gui like spss.  If
> anyone knows of any stable, userfriendly and robust guis for R that would
be
similar to using spss please
> let me know, as I would love for my scho
>  ol to start embracing open source software.

I too am trying to move my organisation from SPSS to R.  While it is well 
worth considering the various command line vs GUI arguments, I appreciate that 
an easy to use GUI is important when weaning oneself and others from a system 
such as SPSS.

I would suggest you have a look at R-Commander.  It is available simply as an 
R package from CRAN (Rcmdr).  It has a familiar, menu-driven interface for a 
good range of data manipulation and analysis tasks, but without losing the 
power of the command line option.  It is actively developed, and John Fox is 
very approachable.  Perhaps most importantly, it is extensible, so you can 
tailor it to suit, and add functions to the menu system.

Michael Bibo
Queensland Health
michael_bibo at health.qld.gov.au