[R] R Textbook for SAS and SPSS Users

Ajay ohri
Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:37:01 -0000

Dear Lists,
I got the chance to review Bob Muenchen's book - R for SAS and SPSS users.
While my detailed review is online at www.decisionstats.com, the book is a
welcome addition in R Textbooks for beginners and an especially nice one for
people who have experience in SAS and /or SPSS languages.

AT 50 USD, it's reasonably priced for all geographies (;) , and quite handy
as a refernce book for three languages.

Regards,

Ajay

http://www.decisionstats.com/?p=653

REVIEW

Introduction- Even though R is a very powerful tool and is free, people with
SAS and SPSS background have trouble adapting to R language. That is because
all data objects in SAS, SPSS are in fixed rectangular layout, and the
programmer just needs to write a series of pre given functions to give
results. In R the flexibility of functions, and the sheer diversity of it
can confuse and confound the SAS and SPSS programmer wanting to learn it.
Note that most SAS and SPSS programmers are corporate users, thus they pay
for licenses only by just signing the approved email, and they have a
paucity of time.


[image: R
Book]<http://www.amazon.com/SAS-SPSS-Users-Statistics-Computing/dp/0387094172/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217456813&sr=8-1>

R Book







The technical review-

The book is lucid, exhaustive and lists down all reasons for and against R
in an objective scientific manner. It goes in great detail, has ready
datasets and offers the earlier reference sheet from its websites (
http://RforSASandSPSSusers.com <http://rforsasandspssusers.com/>). At 50
$
it is not expensive considering the cost of other textbooks in this domain.
Having both SAS and SPSS can be a distraction as many SPSS users actually
use its click and point interface rather than write raw syntax- perhaps
those screenshots should be included.

 It thus gives you the side effect of teaching you twice the languages you
wanted to learn, but that's a good .....

http://www.decisionstats.com/?p=653

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