[R] Wanted: online Introduction to R

[Clive Jenkins]

Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
> 
> > Date: Fri, 12 Nov 1999 15:03:08 +0000
> > From: Clive Jenkins <clive.jenkins at clara.net>
> > X-Accept-Language: en
> > To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> > Subject: [R] Wanted: online Introduction to R
> >
> > As a complete newcomer I am attempting to learn to use R, but am finding
> > it extremely difficult because I have not yet found an "Introduction to
> > R".
> >
> > For over a week now I have monitored the R-help list, studied the R-FAQ
> > and related documents, downloaded and run the Windows R and looked at
> > the Help, downloaded early and late samples of the R-help archives, and
> > searched for illuminating articles in online journals, all with little
> > success.
> >
> > The R documentation appears to be quite good, but it does assume the
> > reader already understands the basics of the language. I had hoped to
> > find, at least, a terse definition of the language syntax with some
> > description of the semantics.
> >
> > Can anybody please assist?
> 
> Can you tell us what you have read? There are the R-notes on CRAN which
> appear to be closest to you want, although they are unreliable in part
> (as they are only partially converted from S notes).  There is an R
> Language reference manual in (private as yet) draft, but it is not at
> all for beginners.
> 
> Bill Venables and I have a book (see the CRAN page) and on-line
> complements for R, and another more formal book in press.  We offer no
> apologies for this having a cost: the effort involved was very considerable.
> For that reason, I do not expect that the sort of material you may
> be looking for will ever be available (legally) for free.
> 
> How to document R is an important issue for the Core Team, but one that
> may need R to become stabler first. (It is still in beta, and in
> detail changing very rapidly as we find things are not as we would
> like.)  However `a terse definition of the language syntax with some
> description of the semantics' does not sound like an `Introduction to R'
> to me, and so we are genuinely interested to understand your comments more.
> 
> --
> Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
> Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
> University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
> 1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
> Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

These are the major documents I had read up to the point when I said
"help!":
-------------------------------------
http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
Brian Ripley's Home Page

ftp://stat.auckland.ac.nz/pub/R/{README, RESOURCES, PLATFORMS, NEWS,
MIRROR-SITES}

http://www.ci.tuwien.ac.at/~hornik/R/R-FAQ.html
"R FAQ". Frequently Asked Questions on R, Version 0.65-7, 1999/10/06,
Kurt Hornik.

http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/R/rw-FAQ.html
"Frequently Asked Questions for R for Windows", Brian Ripley.

Downloaded, installed and ran rw0651, ran demos, browsed the Help
 {rw0651b, rw0651wh, rw0651h, rw0651ch, rw0651w}.zip

http://www.stats.bris.ac.uk/R/doc/html/interface98-paper/paper.html
"R: Past and Future History". A Draft of Ross Ihaka's Interface '98
paper.

http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/pub/MASS3/Compl.shtml
On-line Complements to MASS3, Brian Ripley.

http://stat.eth.ch/R/manual/doc/html/
"R manual" (browsed, not read from cover to cover!)

http://lib.stat.cmu.edu/S/faq
"Frequently Asked Questions about S". $Revision: 1.23 $

http://netlib.bell-labs.com/cm/ms/departments/sia/S/index.html
"Stages in the Evolution of S", John Chambers. 

The latest 2 files and the earliest 2 of:
ftp://ftp.stat.math.ethz.ch/Mail-archives/r-help-*
-------------------------------------

I followed links 2 or 3 deep wherever it appeared fruitful, subject to
the target documents being readable on my PC. I now realise that my main
problem was that I was not set up to read TeX documents, and therefore
passed over the R-notes without realising their crucial significance. I
have since viewed them as raw ASCII and they appear to be what I need.
It might be worth changing the R-FAQ to stress the relevance of the
R-notes to a beginner.

[I had previously downloaded Ghostscript and GSview, in an attempt to
broaden the range of internet resources I could use, but I never spent
enough hours (or days?) to get it working properly. I didn't want to
divert into TeX without having plenty of free time in front of me! Maybe
I should switch to Linux before trying to do anything serious.]

Perhaps I should clarify what sort of a beginner I am. Although I have a
maths degree which introduced me to probability and statistics, I have
not been much involved with statistics for some time, and have no
previous experience of any statistical programs. However, I have many
years experience of programming, using a variety of languages, and
including compiler-writing. I am therefore quite comfortable with terse
documentation, and often prefer it to documents that are too slow to
reveal the real nitty-gritty.

I come to R now (at your suggestion, if you remember: Histogram display
software 1999-11-03 08:29) because I am informally assisting a PhD
student make sense of data drawn from music therapy sessions with groups
of severely disabled children, in particular to recognise potential
dialogue or stimulus/response patterns. This data is a log of encoded
actions performed by the various individuals, transcribed from
videotape. Each item in the log says "from time t1 to time t2 agent x
performs action y". With 5 or 6 agents x and over 100 actions y, this is
not trivial! ... But thats another story!

I hope I haven't gone on too long, but you did ask! I'll take a look at
your (+Venables') book next time I'm in a suitable bookshop or library.
Thanks again.

Clive Jenkins.


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