[R] two questions for R beginners

Patrick Burns pburns at pburns.seanet.com
Fri Feb 26 11:08:32 CET 2010


Saeed,

If the R-help list were split, what do you
see as the pieces?

Pat

On 26/02/2010 01:53, Saeed Abu Nimeh wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 9:31 AM, Patrick Burns<pburns at pburns.seanet.com>  wrote:
>> * What were your biggest misconceptions or
>> stumbling blocks to getting up and running
>> with R?
>
> 1- Compared to other programming languages it is hard to learn R by
> example, because it is hard to find code on the web that will do the
> exact thing you are looking for, sometimes you might get lucky though.
> By contrast, take Perl for example, it is an easy language to learn by
> example.
>
> 2- The R mailing list. Beginners get frustrated after they struggle
> for a long time to solve a problem and the easiest thing then is to
> send an email to the R mailing list. I did this in the past. The best
> thing that happened was that my request was neglected and I had to
> spend more time on the problem and find a solution by myself
> eventually. Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that the mailing list
> is bad, but it should be more organized. Maybe broken down into couple
> of other mailing lists. This might bring up a good discussion thread.
>
>>
>> * What documents helped you the most in this
>> initial phase?
>
> An Introduction to R by Venables
> simpleR – Using R for Introductory Statistics by Verzani
>

-- 
Patrick Burns
pburns at pburns.seanet.com
http://www.burns-stat.com
(home of 'The R Inferno' and 'A Guide for the Unwilling S User')



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