(GUIs, was R GUI ( was Re: [R] R Documentation(s)))

Prof Brian D Ripley ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Tue May 9 07:46:52 CEST 2000


I've changed the subject line: this is not about the R GUI as presently
exists (on Windows and GNOME).

On Tue, 9 May 2000, Paul E. Johnson wrote:

> Peter Dalgaard BSA wrote:
> > 
> > Actually, I think there are valid reasons for people to want GUI
> > interfaces to statistics. One argument that I hear frequently is that
> > nonstatisticians tend to do other things than analyse data for
> > extended periods of time, and it becomes difficult to remember the
> > formalities from one time to the next. So they get scared of the
> > prospect of staring empty-minded at the R prompt. 
> > 
> > As long as you can turn the GUI *off* and use R as usual, I see no
> > reason not to have some form of GUI. 
> 
> I used SAS to produce some reports that I couldn't make R generate. 
> Perhaps R can, I couldn't see how.  The reports from SAS PROC TABULATE
> summarize about 100 variables, showing the means & other summaries for
> subgroups to allow a side-by side comparison.  I had not used SAS for
> several editions, but in edition 8 they have a thing called "Analyst"
> where you can point and click on various anaysis/graph types and it
> generates a code template, which you can then grab, copy, edit, etc. 
> The SAS manuals are, well, almost impossible to understand.  Take a look
> at the writup on PROC TABULATE if you don't know what I mean.  But with
> analyst, they had a few templates for tables, and I could get the code
> for them, and get what I wanted after that.
> 
> That kind of thing is very useful because the "infrequent user" often
> will not know that a function exists to do something, but he can take a
> code example and put it to use.  I don't have many good things to say
> about SPSS, but they do have the (seldom used) feature that can generate
> code for every gui step you take and a facility to edit and run these
> "scripts".  

Um.  In all the statistical GUIs I have used (including those two and
S_PLUS) the menu/dialogs interface shows you only a part of what can be
done. (Actually, I think in SPSS for Windows it is all that can be done,
but SPSS itself can do more.)  So my experience is the other way round: I
know it can be done, but I can't find out how from the GUI and as GUIs are
supposed to me self-explanatory, no other documentation is to hand.

> One of the most intimidating things about R is the seeming endlessness
> of it.  I've fiddled with it since version 0.64 or so, and I've
> contributed RPMs for the hdf5 data format in R, so I'm not completely
> dead weight (just mostly so).  But after all this time I don't quite
> have a mental image of its capabilities and boundaries.  A GUI helps
> people to see what can be done and how it might fit together.

Only in things a lot less powerful than R.

> It has helped me a great deal that some of the kind people in this list
> post R sample programs that they use with their classes. I find I learn
> an awful lot by trying to make them work.  In the short term, a list of
> these pedagogical resources will do a lot more good than anything else.

I think you are overlooking (the quite explicit statement) that R's
capabilities are more or less equal to those of S, and there are extensive
accounts of S's view of the world (not least books by Bill Venables & I!).
In short, you are ignoring the main pedagogical resources, things called
books.

Remember that there is product `not unlike R' that does have an extensive
menu/dialogs front-end, so the pros and cons of GUI to S are not
unexplored.  And I am in favour of one for R, but I do not give it high
priority.  (It really would be man-months of work.)  We would need to sort
out a cross-platform GUI interface design and have that running first or
one ends up with a Windows-only GUI (as happened with all the examples
above).


-- 
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

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