[R] R Documentation(s) -- Summary

Ko-Kang Wang Ko-Kang at xtra.co.nz
Tue May 9 11:45:18 CEST 2000



Emmanuel Paradis wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Many thanks to all who replied to my message. Here follows a summary of the
> most important points to me.
>
> 1. There seems to be a general agreement on a need for docs for
> non-statisticians with respect to two points: (i) explaining how to get
> first in R for those who are not used with command-lines, object-oriented
> languages, loops, ... and (ii) illustrating to the various specialists how
> they could use R to do the analyses or tests which are common practice in
> their field.
>
> 2. There is a need to translate docs (and this has already started in
> Japanese). This could concern only the non-technical materials, as
> statisticians, mathematicians ... generally read English.
>
> It appears that significant materials probably already exist in various
> files, folders, ... around the world, so trying to fill the above needs may
> be carried out by putting together efforts that have already been done.
>
> Here are my (vague) suggestions on the objectives relative to the above needs.
>
> 1.i. Writing a simple and short tutorial on how to do basic things in R
> (read data, plots, graphs...); also emphasize on the advantages of R
> compared to softwares with pull-down menus.
>

As an undergraduate student who has only been using R for 2 years, I feel that I am
quite suitable to comment on this proporsal.
By now I consider myself an intermediate R user, and even so I sometimes still
forget some basic things in R.  However, almost all of the time I can find what I
want by using the R Documentation Manuals (by typing ?function_name).  I actually
think the R help file has already contained quite enough [basic] information for
beginners, it even explains each argument in a function.

Therefore, I personally think the R Manual (or what I call the R API) is sufficient
enough.  If, for example, a newbie wants to find how to use the plot() in R, he/she
can simply type
> ?plot
then there are lots of help and hints there!  The next step he/she should do is go
through each example line by line, to see what each line does.  Then perhaps creat
his/her own example, say:
> x <- 1:10
> plot( x )
> plot( x, main = "Test", xlab = "Index", ylab = "foo" )
.
.
.
To me, when I was a newbie, I found this is the best technique.

>
> 1.ii. This could take 2 forms (but not mutually exclusive). First, write
> tutorials explaining how to do the usual stats in a given field, this could
> be appended to the above doc with chapters like "R for biologists", "R for
> psychologists", ... Second, write packages similar to Doug Bates' Devore5,
> but referring to the handbooks that are popular in other fields (for
> instance, Sokal & Rohlf's "Biometry" is very popular among my colleagues).

In fact, I've got bits and bits examples and tutorials on "R for Mathematicians",
"R for Econometricians" and "R for Statisticians".
However some of them are quite short (approx 5 pages) and I don't think they are
worth contributed at this stage.  I may add a bit more things to it.

By the way, does anyone know if there is a "R for Computer Scientists" tutorial or
documentation around?

>
>
> 2. Probably what is proposed above would be worth translating... but it
> still needs to be written (... in any language). The "Introduction to R" at
> least already exists, but (looking at it closely right now...) it is quite
> a dense document and I have no idea on the time required to translate it
> (it depends on the language it is translated in I suppose). On the other
> hand, if it has already been translated in Japanese then it could be worth
> doing it with other languages.

In fact, I have volunteered to translate "An Introduction to R" into Chinese
Traditional.  However, I'm a bit disappointed that nobody have replied to me that
they are willing to help me.  I am very sure there are lots of Chinese users out
there, do they/you think a Chinese translation is not needed?

>
>
> There is a (probably less urgent) need for advanced users on how to write
> new R functions, more advanced R features... Brian Ripley mentioned that an
> R Language Manual is planned, and the last book by Venables & Ripley treats
> R as one of three dialects of the S language.
>
> Again, these are simply suggestions, and I would be glad to discuss them. I
> am, of course, volunteer to contribute to docs and others mentioned they
> are as well. No doubt there will be enough enthusiasm among R users to
> carry out the task.
>
> Finally, many thanks to Friedrich Leisch for his proposal to create a
> ``contributed documentation'' section on CRAN.
>
> Best wishes to all,
>
> Emmanuel Paradis
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--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 Ko-Kang Wang
 Undergraduate Student
 Computer Science/Statistics Double Major
 University of Auckland
 Auckland 1005
 New Zealand
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