Robert Wilk
2009-Jan-12 20:36 UTC
[R] Useful books for learning the R software and the S programming language
any useful books for learning the R statistical software? are they pricey? and if the books recommended focus on S, how compatible will they be for someone learning R? thank you in advance for your help. P.S. specialized survey statistical procedures? Is R good at that? [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
Steve_Friedman at nps.gov
2009-Jan-12 21:56 UTC
[R] Useful books for learning the R software and the S programming language
Look here to start.
http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html
Steve Friedman Ph. D.
Spatial Statistical Analyst
Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Park
950 N Krome Ave (3rd Floor)
Homestead, Florida 33034
Steve_Friedman at nps.gov
Office (305) 224 - 4282
Fax (305) 224 - 4147
"Robert Wilk"
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[R] Useful books for learning the R
01/12/2009 03:36 software and the S programming
PM EST language
any useful books for learning the R statistical software?
are they pricey?
and if the books recommended focus on S, how compatible will they be for
someone learning R?
thank you in advance for your help.
P.S.
specialized survey statistical procedures? Is R good at that?
[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
______________________________________________
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.
Peter Dalgaard
2009-Jan-12 22:07 UTC
[R] Useful books for learning the R software and the S programming language
Robert Wilk wrote:> any useful books for learning the R statistical software? > are they pricey?Many. "Useful" depends on the reader, though, so look around. Here's a starting point http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html (modesty should forbid me to point at item 18 on the list and the fact that Amazon US has it currently 19% discounted....) In general R books are cheaper than statistical monographs, but more expensive than the large market computer science books.> and if the books recommended focus on S, how compatible will they be for > someone learning R?Such books are strongly outnumbered by now. One important book from that group is Venables+Ripley's Modern Applied Statistics with S explicitly addresses R issues.> > thank you in advance for your help. > > > P.S. > specialized survey statistical procedures? Is R good at that?Not R in itself, but the "survey" package for it is rumoured to be state of the art, and its author has a book on it in its final stages. -- O__ ---- Peter Dalgaard ?ster Farimagsgade 5, Entr.B c/ /'_ --- Dept. of Biostatistics PO Box 2099, 1014 Cph. K (*) \(*) -- University of Copenhagen Denmark Ph: (+45) 35327918 ~~~~~~~~~~ - (p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk) FAX: (+45) 35327907
David Winsemius
2009-Jan-12 22:37 UTC
[R] Useful books for learning the R software and the S programming language
On Jan 12, 2009, at 3:36 PM, Robert Wilk wrote:> any useful books for learning the R statistical software? > are they pricey? >Compared to medical texts, they are dirt cheap.> and if the books recommended focus on S, how compatible will they be > for > someone learning R?Many are available for R these days. It used to be that MASS editions 1 through 4 by Venables and Ripley were the canonical starting points, but in recent years Dalgaard and other have contributed efforts at intro and intermediate texts. Cutting and pasting from the R-books page: http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html [18] Peter Dalgaard. Introductory Statistics with R. [49] John Verzani. Using R for Introductory Statistics. [48] Michael J. Crawley. Statistics: An Introduction using R. [62] William N. Venables and Brian D. Ripley. Modern Applied Statistics with S. Fourth Edition. (mentions only S in the title but I believe that where differences exist, they are pointed out in this edition.) [63] John Fox. An R and S-Plus Companion to Applied Regression. [65] Frank E. Harrell. Regression Modeling Strategies, with Applications to Linear Models, Survival Analysis and Logistic Regression. (I don't think Harrell intended this as a tutorial but I can't resist a plug. Alzola and Harrell have published a useful book length guide: http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/twiki/pub/Main/RS/sintro.pdf And Kuhnert and Venables have also written a book length pdf: http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Kuhnert+Venables-R_Course_Notes.zip> > > thank you in advance for your help. > > > P.S. > specialized survey statistical procedures? Is R good at that?See whether Lumley's survey package functions are sufficient. Knowledgeable people have opined that they are more complete than what is available in SAS. http://faculty.washington.edu/tlumley/survey/ -- David Winsemius, MD Heritage Labs> > > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > 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.
Rau, Roland
2009-Jan-13 09:37 UTC
[R] Useful books for learning the R software and the S programminglanguage
Hi,
if I may add my 2 cents.
- The most important thing is to have a real problem/question you want
to solve. Just "trying to learn" is very difficult because you might
encounter some problems and if this is not a problem you *have* to
solve, I would have the tendency to skip this particular problem.
- Have a look at "An Introduction to R". This manual is shipped with
every R distribution. Also have a look at the Data Import/Export Manual
(also shipped with R). With real problems usually you have already a
data-set which you need to read/load.
- If you want to buy yourself only one book, I would recommend the
Venables & Ripley: Modern Applied Statistics with S ("MASS"). It
covers
many, many topics such as GLMs, survival analysis, time series analysis,
.... If you know already what kind of statistical analysis you want to
perform, this is the ideal book because it summarizes the statistical
theory and shows how this is implemented in R. (And in case that R and
S-Plus differ, MASS tells you how). Peter Dalgaard's "An Introduction
to
R" is also an excellent but. It requires less from the reader than MASS.
Maybe have a look at both and then decide for yourself (sorry, those are
the only two R books I have).
- Make yourself familiar with the help functions in R. They might look
strange in the beginning, but they are incredibly helpful. Besides the
great example section, I consider the "See Also" section to be very
helpful: when you are not exactly sure if the current help page is what
you are looking for, quite often I found the function I actually needed
mentioned there.
- Don't try to "translate" from other statistics packages. This
might be
particularly difficult. When I started with R, I was looking for
instance for "what is the equivelant R function of SPSS's
'recode'?".
Rather try to formulate the problem in English words and then search for
it in the R-Help archives. Furthermore, for me, personally, "S Poetry"
by Patrick Burns was a joy to read and it was the best tutorial for
subscripting (Chapter 1.3).
http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/spoetry.html (I am looking forward to
read his "Inferno" as well.)
I hope this helps a bit,
Roland
> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Robert Wilk
> Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 9:36 PM
> To: r-help at r-project.org
> Subject: [R] Useful books for learning the R software and the
> S programminglanguage
>
> any useful books for learning the R statistical software?
> are they pricey?
>
> and if the books recommended focus on S, how compatible will
> they be for
> someone learning R?
>
> thank you in advance for your help.
>
>
> P.S.
> specialized survey statistical procedures? Is R good at that?
>
> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> 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.
>
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