[R] Fwd: Re: [friday topic]: what exactly is statistical computing

Richard M. Heiberger
2007-03-02T21:14:52Z

This is a very fascinating discussion topic.  I find I run into
some fundamental differences in interpretation of the phrase "statistical
computing".  I think of it as writing programs or functions, such as R or
packages
in R, and of understanding the numerical analysis behind these functions.

I exclude USING computer programs, such as R, for data analysis from my
definition of statistical computing.  I see that as doing statistics.
I have had students, some sent by other faculty members, in my class
on statistical computing thinking they were going to learn how to do statistical
analysis using the computer.  There was a clash of expectations between what
they thought they were taking and what I had in the syllabus.

Rich

---- Original message ----
>Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2007 13:25:59 -0600
>From: "Lucke, Joseph F" <Joseph.F.Lucke at uth.tmc.edu>
>Subject: Re: [R] [friday topic]: what exactly is statistical computing
>To: "Roger D. Peng" <rdpeng at gmail.com>, "Wensui
Liu" <liuwensui at gmail.com>
>Cc: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch, "Bos, Roger" <roger.bos at
us.rothschild.com>
>
>Statistical computing perhaps is not so much a single topic as a family
>of related topics (a la Wittgenstein) that share a lot in common but
>perhaps very little is common to all. For example,
>1. Statistical computing in contrast to statistical theory.
>6. Statistical computing as a supplement to statistical theory.
>2. Statistical computing as gaining insight through data visualization
>3. Statistical computing for asymptotic analyses
>4. Statistical computing for approximations to unknown distributions
>5. Statistical computing for teaching demonstrations
>7. Statistical computing for assessing behavior of statistics.
>
>and so on.
>
>Joe