I realize the R developers are probably overwhelmed and have little time for this, but the documentation really needs some serious reorganizaton. A good through description of basic variable types would help a lot, e.g. the difference between lists, arrays, matrices and frames. And, it appears there is some object-orientation to R, but it is not complete. I can't, for instance find a "metafile" method for a "recordedplot" type, using either the variable direclty or the replayPlot() method. I am sorry to post this, but I am really having trouble sorting out certain methods in "R". The basic tutorial "Introduction to R" is so basic, it hardly helps at all, then digging through documentation is really an exercise in frustration. The SimpleR is also so basic it is of little help other than to just get started. I occasionally find answers in the mailing list. See my later post on recordPlot for a good example.
I agree completely. Maybe it's time for an exhaustive manual (with weekly downloadable updates, of course). It would also be nice if it were cross-referenced. For example, to get what I wanted last weekend from a simple 2x2 contingency analysis, I had to bounce between 4 different libraries. (All I was trying to do was replicate the output from SAS Proc Freq). A lot of the library documentations have a See Also section but these may be getting out of date. But maybe our request is too monumental to be feasible. (?) Jeff -----Original Message----- From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Beck, Kenneth (STP) Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 5:56 PM To: r-help at r-project.org Subject: [R] Documentation General Comments I realize the R developers are probably overwhelmed and have little time for this, but the documentation really needs some serious reorganizaton. A good through description of basic variable types would help a lot, e.g. the difference between lists, arrays, matrices and frames. And, it appears there is some object-orientation to R, but it is not complete. I can't, for instance find a "metafile" method for a "recordedplot" type, using either the variable direclty or the replayPlot() method. I am sorry to post this, but I am really having trouble sorting out certain methods in "R". The basic tutorial "Introduction to R" is so basic, it hardly helps at all, then digging through documentation is really an exercise in frustration. The SimpleR is also so basic it is of little help other than to just get started. I occasionally find answers in the mailing list. See my later post on recordPlot for a good example. Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. 11:27 AM Internal Virus Database is out-of-date. Checked by AVG Free Edition. 11:27 AM
> I realize the R developers are probably overwhelmed and have little time > for this, but the documentation really needs some serious reorganizaton. > A good through description of basic variable types would help a lot, > e.g. the difference between lists, arrays, matrices and frames.Agreed, esp since I am right now at this moment struggling with the differences of lists, arrays and vectors. (I have two vectors that I am trying to return from a function as an array of two rows - for some reason that's not working) I just started with the R last week , and I am trying to get up to speed with this language. And while I have many years of experience with various programming languages, many which I have learned on my own, I am encountering a number of things that are slowing me down. I have downloaded the various intro/reference materials. I am super-happy to have found this list though, everyone seems friendly and helpful, and I am learning a lot from it. Any new/additional documentation would be much welcome. _________________________________________________________________ esh_getintouch_042008 [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
You can find all methods for an S3 class by doing this: methods(class = "recordedplot") For S4 see ?showMethods On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 5:56 PM, Beck, Kenneth (STP) <Kenneth.Beck at bsci.com> wrote:> I realize the R developers are probably overwhelmed and have little time > for this, but the documentation really needs some serious reorganizaton. > A good through description of basic variable types would help a lot, > e.g. the difference between lists, arrays, matrices and frames. And, it > appears there is some object-orientation to R, but it is not complete. I > can't, for instance find a "metafile" method for a "recordedplot" type, > using either the variable direclty or the replayPlot() method. I am > sorry to post this, but I am really having trouble sorting out certain > methods in "R". The basic tutorial "Introduction to R" is so basic, it > hardly helps at all, then digging through documentation is really an > exercise in frustration. The SimpleR is also so basic it is of little > help other than to just get started. I occasionally find answers in the > mailing list. See my later post on recordPlot for a good example. > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help > PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html > and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code. > >
This is a case of you can't please everyone. A while back there was some complaint that "Introduction to R" spent to much time on talking about the different types of variables, just the opposite complaint of yours. There are several other sources of documentation (look under the books link on the R homepage or the contributed documentation link on any CRAN site, also browse through the newsletter). For more in depth information on variable types and object oriented programming in R you may want to invest in a copy of "S Programming" by Venables and Ripley. If you have specific questions (about data types, or other) then tell us what you have read and what you still do not understand and you are more likely to get a useful answer. (also read the posting guide that is referenced at the bottom of almost all posts to the list). -- Gregory (Greg) L. Snow Ph.D. Statistical Data Center Intermountain Healthcare greg.snow at imail.org (801) 408-8111> -----Original Message----- > From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org > [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Beck, Kenneth (STP) > Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 3:56 PM > To: r-help at r-project.org > Subject: [R] Documentation General Comments > > I realize the R developers are probably overwhelmed and have > little time for this, but the documentation really needs some > serious reorganizaton. > A good through description of basic variable types would help > a lot, e.g. the difference between lists, arrays, matrices > and frames. And, it appears there is some object-orientation > to R, but it is not complete. I can't, for instance find a > "metafile" method for a "recordedplot" type, using either the > variable direclty or the replayPlot() method. I am sorry to > post this, but I am really having trouble sorting out certain > methods in "R". The basic tutorial "Introduction to R" is so > basic, it hardly helps at all, then digging through > documentation is really an exercise in frustration. The > SimpleR is also so basic it is of little help other than to > just get started. I occasionally find answers in the mailing > list. See my later post on recordPlot for a good example. >
I realize the R developers are probably overwhelmed and have little time for this, but the documentation really needs some serious reorganizaton. My reply: I'm quite new to R and so have spent a lot of time in the last few days reading documentation both online and text. I'm incredibly impressed by the language and, overall, by the documentation - the documentation tools are so well integrated into the program, and in most cases the documentation does a good job of balancing brevity and completeness. The original poster noted a need for "reorganization" (not revision) and I think that's key. Several people have posted about potential projects in several threads - so I'll try combining those thoughts in a new response thread. Summary: 1) New users have questions based on common tasks, which don't necessarily reflect the structure of the language 2) There's a lot of good documentation out there already, both official and unofficial 3) It doesn't break intellectual property laws to create an "annotated bibliography" of existing references, with a task-based topic structure. 4) I suspect new and old users would contribute to such a project if it allowed external contributions - as in, suggest a resource (under an existing topic) along with a brief explanation about why that resource was helpful. Detailed comments: One thing I notice in the official documentation is that it's organized around the R language structure. The "help" table of contents does include a listing of natural-language titles, but they're listed alphabetically rather than organized by task-based concept. But when you look at the forums, the new users are searching for information by task or by concept - what are the classes of object? How do I manipulate a data frame? What are my tools for regular expressions? Many of my texts (and some independent web pages) seem to try to organize by task, but all are incomplete - perhaps because of space limitations, perhaps because the language is so dynamic that useful functions hadn't yet been developed when a text was published. Also, most of my books actually only introduce the R language then move on to discussing the use of R for specific statistical functions. Yet, most of the forum questions seem to be about things like loading and manipulating the data to get it into the appropriate format for the desired analysis. So I really like the suggestion to try creating some cross-indexing for the materials that are out there already. Perhaps a wiki-based "annotated bibliography" with a task-based structure. I'm tempted to suggest that we just expand on the wikipedia content for R! The structure of such a thing should have categories like "managing regular expressions" or "manipulating data in dataframes" - and often a particular topic might be cross-referenced to more than one category, I'd think. By annotated bibliography I mean that most of the entries under a topic would be "here's a link or reference to a source that seems to explain this topic well - and here's why I like it". And - I have to run to a meeting. So I will stop brainstorming now. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Documentation-General-Comments-tp16821085p16895859.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.