R help - Jul 2007 - The R Book by M. J. Crawley

Hello all-

I would appreciate any guidance that can be provided.  I am new to R and
am 
using it exclusively in a statistics program I am undertaking that
mainly references
Minitab.  My focus is on data modeling and further more multivariate
data analysis
as much of my work in involves chemical measurements from custom sensors
using
all sorts of transduction methods.   I am looking for a reference that
has sound statistical
foundations with relevant R commands as well as multivariate support.  I
saw the new book,
"The R Book", by Michael J. Crawley and wanted to know what R users
thoughts of it.

Thanks in advance,

Matt

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Pietrzykowski, Matthew (GE, Research) wrote:
> Hello all-
> 
> I would appreciate any guidance that can be provided.  I am new to R and
> am 
> using it exclusively in a statistics program I am undertaking that
> mainly references
> Minitab.  My focus is on data modeling and further more multivariate
> data analysis
> as much of my work in involves chemical measurements from custom sensors
> using
> all sorts of transduction methods.   I am looking for a reference that
> has sound statistical
> foundations with relevant R commands as well as multivariate support.  I
> saw the new book,
> "The R Book", by Michael J. Crawley and wanted to know what R
users
> thoughts of it.
The author seems to be an expert in (almost?) all available statistical 
programming languages and able to write almost 1000 pages about these 
languages. He also seems to be a perfect R programmer, since the title 
is "The R book".

Uwe Ligges

> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Matt
> 
> 	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
> 
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"Pietrzykowski, Matthew (GE, Research)"
<pietrzyk at research.ge.com> wrote:
> Hello all-
> 
> I would appreciate any guidance that can be provided.  
>I am new to R and am using it exclusively in a statistics 
> program I am undertaking that mainly references
> Minitab.  My focus is on data modeling and further 
> more multivariate data analysis [...]
> I I am looking for a reference that has sound statistical
> foundations with relevant R commands as well as 
> multivariate support.  I saw the new book,
> "The R Book", by Michael J. Crawley and wanted to 
> know what R users thoughts of it.
I can't comment on The R Book, as I haven't seen it. This is to
point out some other references for your consideration.  In
order of most technical to most relaxed:

The standard reference for many R users is "Modern Applied
Statistics with S" by Venables and Ripley, two important
contributors to R.  This has a language introduction and a great
variety of statistical material in its 500 pages. Though I
haven't read every word, I would not for a nanosecond doubt its
"sound statistical foundations."  It seems to me that every R
user would benefit from having MASS (as it's called) on his
shelf.

More relaxed in presentation but still with some multivariate
coverage is "Data Analysis and Graphics using R," by Maindonald
and Braun, also names quite familiar to most R users. This is
more typical of a introductory statistics textbook, and shorter
(about 350 p.).

Even more relaxed but with less breadth of statistical topics is
"Introductory Statistics with R" by Dalgaard, yet another
familiar contributor to R.  This is an excellent introductory
book.  After I had been using R for 5 years, I bought a copy and
learned several good things immediately. About 270 p.

You may want to examine those (along with Crawley's) before
settling on the what you want to buy.

I hope that helps.

Mike

-- 
Mike Prager, NOAA, Beaufort, NC
* Opinions expressed are personal and not represented otherwise.
* Any use of tradenames does not constitute a NOAA endorsement.