Using a PC I have written the R code for my elementary statistics students. One of the students has a Mac. Should the same lines of code work on a Mac? Where can the student find support for R on her Mac? I don't know anything about them, and have never used one. Thank you. [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 4:25 PM, Tom Mosca <tom at vims.edu> wrote:> Using a PC I have written the R code for my elementary statistics students. One of the students has a Mac. Should the same lines of code work on a Mac? > > > > Where can the student find support for R on her Mac? I don't know anything about them, and have never used one. >There's an official FAQ for Mac, just as there is for Windows. https://cran.r-project.org/faqs.html There's also a Mac-specific email help list. https://www.r-project.org/mail.html Most R code will run as well or better on Mac. All of the OS problems I've run into tend to be problems with Windows. It's a bit harder to get some geospatial stuff working on Mac, but that's unlikely to be a problem with your elementary stats students. Sarah -- Sarah Goslee http://www.functionaldiversity.org
On 9/1/2016 9:44 AM, Sarah Goslee wrote:> On Wed, Aug 31, 2016 at 4:25 PM, Tom Mosca <tom at vims.edu> wrote: >> Using a PC I have written the R code for my elementary statistics students. One of the students has a Mac. Should the same lines of code work on a Mac? >> >> Where can the student find support for R on her Mac? I don't know anything about them, and have never used one. >> > > There's an official FAQ for Mac, just as there is for Windows. > https://cran.r-project.org/faqs.html > There's also a Mac-specific email help list. > https://www.r-project.org/mail.html > > Most R code will run as well or better on Mac. All of the OS problems > I've run into tend to be problems with Windows. It's a bit harder to > get some geospatial stuff working on Mac, but that's unlikely to be a > problem with your elementary stats students.Sarah has pointed you at some Mac support, but some additional advice as to the student audience. [I live in a Windows world most of the time and a Ubuntu world the rest of the time, so I have minimal knowledg of OSX]. Having students install RStudio has really helped because it brings cross-platform commonality here and there. The biggest problems I've run into with beginning statistics students are the issues related to getting them connected to our network and/or reading in textbook datasets located on that network. Differences in handling of line endings on text files. However, if you do ground work to show them how to do some basic basic things early, they can support themselves with these things. The commands will work the same For text files I often have (Windows) students copy data to the clipboard and use a command like x <- read.table(file = 'clipboard', sep = '\t', header = TRUE) so we can work through some statistical tests or graphing. This won't work on a Mac. An equivalent formulation that is helpful on the Mac is x <- read.table(file = pipe('pbpaste'), sep = '\t', header = TRUE) Other than that, I think you'll find R extremely OS agnostic in a teaching environment. -- -- Robert W. Baer, Ph.D. Professor of Physiology Kirksville College of Osteopathic Medicine A T Still University of Health Sciences 800 W. Jefferson St Kirksville, MO 63501 660-626-2321 Department 660-626-2965 FAX
Dear Tom Mosca, Re:> Using a PC I have written the R code for my elementary statistics students. One of the students has a Mac. Should the same lines of code work on a Mac? > > > > Where can the student find support for R on her Mac? I don't know anything about them, and have never used one. >Some commands are platform-dependent though, such as opening the standard graphics window [quartz() vs windows()]. This needn't be a problem, since in R a script can sense on which platform it is running. Some years ago I wrote a platform-sensing graphics routine, reproduced below. This might help to prevent problems with simple graphics demos, and can no doubt be extended to other commands. Success, and Best regards, Franklin Bretschneider Dept of Biology Utrecht University bretschr at xs4all.nl # function PIgraph.r # Platform-Independent graphics init # determines platform (Windows or Mac) then chooses device type # F. Bretschneider; 04-08-2009 # =================== PIgraph <- function(w,h) if(.Platform$OS.type == "windows") windows(w=w, h=h) else quartz(w=w, h=h) # example application x=-3:3 y=x^2 PIgraph(8,6) plot(x,y, type = 'o')
R already contains platform-independent code to open a graphics device: dev.new() The device thus created is specified in options(), but by default is appropriate for the current platform. It's good practice to use this function instead of calling quartz() directly so that your code can be run on other systems. Sarah On Thu, Sep 1, 2016 at 11:34 AM, Franklin Bretschneider <bretschr at xs4all.nl> wrote:> Dear Tom Mosca, > > Re: > >> Using a PC I have written the R code for my elementary statistics students. One of the students has a Mac. Should the same lines of code work on a Mac? >> >> >> >> Where can the student find support for R on her Mac? I don't know anything about them, and have never used one. >> > > > Some commands are platform-dependent though, such as opening the standard graphics window [quartz() vs windows()]. > This needn't be a problem, since in R a script can sense on which platform it is running. > Some years ago I wrote a platform-sensing graphics routine, reproduced below. > This might help to prevent problems with simple graphics demos, and can no doubt be extended to other commands. > > Success, and > Best regards, > > > Franklin Bretschneider > Dept of Biology > Utrecht University > bretschr at xs4all.nl > > > > > # function PIgraph.r > # Platform-Independent graphics init > # determines platform (Windows or Mac) then chooses device type > # F. Bretschneider; 04-08-2009 > # ===================> > PIgraph <- function(w,h) if(.Platform$OS.type == "windows") windows(w=w, h=h) else quartz(w=w, h=h) > > # example application > x=-3:3 > y=x^2 > PIgraph(8,6) > plot(x,y, type = 'o') > > ______________________________________________ > R-help at r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see > 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.-- Sarah Goslee http://www.stringpage.com http://www.sarahgoslee.com http://www.functionaldiversity.org