[R] two questions for R beginners
Thomas Adams
Thomas.Adams at noaa.gov
Fri Feb 26 16:55:52 CET 2010
Paul,
I think your point "you need [to] spend at least a few hours a week on
it" is key. Since I am not doing statistics daily, more in fits & starts
as my latest project -may- require, my approach has been more task
oriented. A less-than-ideal approach. So, I think your suggestion is
on-the-mark.
Tom
Paul Hiemstra wrote:
> Ivan Calandra wrote:
>> You are definitely right...
>> What to do with bad beginner's questions is not a simple issue.
>>
>> If a "beginner's mailing list" is created, who will answer to such
>> questions? And moreover, the beginners won't take advantage of the
>> other questions (I've personally learned a lot trying to understand
>> the questions and answers to other's problems). And also, as you
>> said, the problems might persist.
>> The beginner's mailing list might be good in one aspect though: the
>> "experts" who subscribe to it would be willing to help the beginners
>> to get started with R, knowing that the questions might not be
>> clearly stated.
>>
>> As you pointed out, the mailing list is not the best for basic stuff
>> (the question is of course "what is basic?"). Not everybody knows
>> some colleagues who work with R (I'm personally the 1st one to use R
>> in my lab).
>> I think, somehow and I have no idea how, documentation and guidance
>> to search for help should be more accessible as soon as you start
>> with R. Maybe a _*clear*_ section on the R homepage or in the
>> "introduction to R" manual like "where to find help", including all
>> of the most common and useful resources available (from "?" and
>> RSiteSearch() to R Wiki and Crantastic).
>>
> Hi Ivan (and list),
>
> I think the main problem is not as much that there isn't structure in
> the way R provides documentation / tutorials, but that people have a
> hard time finding the structure. There are task views for certain
> specific fields, but I think a lot of beginners do not know that they
> exist. There are separate mailing lists for specific fields, but I
> often see geographical (my field of expertise) oriented questions on
> R-help that would fit much better on R-sig-geo.
>
> So I think a "O my God, I've downloaded R and what now" tutorial might
> be a good idea to put very close to the download button of R on CRAN.
> This tutorial would focus not on how to do things in R, but would
> provide guidance to the most obvious sources of information such as
> Task views, specific mailing lists, ways to search list archives,
> information for beginners how to write a good e-mail etc. I think for
> a lot of beginners it is not as much the answer to a specific question
> that they need, but more guidance how to look for answers themselves.
>
> But at the end of the day, R is still not very easy to learn when
> coming from GUI oriented stats programs. In addition, to become
> reasonably fluent in R, you need spend at least a few hours a week on
> it. SO I think we can ease the pain for beginners, but not take away
> that it takes quite some time to become fluent in R.
>
> cheers,
> Paul
>> I hope that this whole discussion might help to make the R world better.
>> Thank you Patrick for initiating it!
>> Regards,
>> Ivan
>>
>> Le 2/26/2010 15:09, Paul Hiemstra a écrit :
>>
>>> Ivan Calandra wrote:
>>>
>>>> Since you want input from beginners, here are some thoughts
>>>>
>>>> I had and still have two big problems with R:
>>>> - this vectorization thing. I've read many manuals (including R
>>>> inferno), but I'm still not completely clear about it. In simple
>>>> examples, it's fine. But when it gets a bit more complex, then...
>>>> Related to it, the *apply functions are still a bit difficult to
>>>> understand. When I have to use them, I just try one and see what
>>>> happens. I don't understand them well enough to know which one I need.
>>>> - the second problem is where to find the functions/packages I
>>>> need. There are many options, and that's actually the problem. R
>>>> Wiki, Rseek, RSiteSearch, Crantastic, etc... When you start with R,
>>>> you discover that the capabilities of R are almost unlimited and
>>>> you don't really know where to start, where to find what you need.
>>>>
>>>> As noted in earlier posts, the mailing list is really great, but
>>>> some people are really hard with beginners. It was noted in a
>>>> discussion a few days ago, but it looks like some don't realize how
>>>> difficult it is at the beginning to formulate a good question,
>>>> clear, with self-contained example and so on. Moreover, not
>>>> everybody speaks English natively. I don't mean that you must help,
>>>> even when the question is really vague and not clear and whatever.
>>>> I'm just saying that if you don't want to help (whatever the
>>>> reason), you don't have to say it badly. But in any cases, the
>>>> mailing list is still really helpful. As someone noted (sorry I
>>>> erased the email so I don't remember who), it might be a good idea
>>>> to split it.
>>>>
>>> Hi everyone,
>>>
>>> My 2ct about the mailing list :). I understand that beginners have a
>>> hard time formulating a good question. But the problem is that we
>>> can't answer the question when it is unclear. So either I:
>>>
>>> - Don't bother answering
>>> - Try do discuss with the author of the question, taking lots of
>>> time to find out what exactly is the question.
>>> - Send a "read the posting guide" answer
>>>
>>> I mostly do the first, as I have to get things done during my PhD
>>> :). So this leaves us with kind of a problem, the person mailing the
>>> list doesn't have the knowledge to ask the right question, the list
>>> can't answer properly and consequently, the person mailing the list
>>> still doesn't get the information he/she needs. We could start an
>>> R-beginner mailing list, but this would also suffer from this
>>> problem. What do you guys think?
>>>
>>> Maybe the mailing list is not the right medium for really basic
>>> stuff. For that I would recommend a good R-book or (better) a course
>>> in R or (even better) some colleagues who work with R that you can
>>> ask questions to.
>>>
>>> cheers,
>>> Paul
>>>
>>>> Hope that's what you wanted
>>>> Ivan
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Le 2/26/2010 08:39, Dieter Menne a écrit :
>>>>
>>>>> Patrick Burns wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> * What were your biggest misconceptions or
>>>>>> stumbling blocks to getting up and running
>>>>>> with R?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>> (This derives partly from teaching)
>>>>>
>>>>> The fact that this xapply-stuff was not idempotent (worse: not
>>>>> always) and
>>>>> that you need a monster like do.call() to straighten this out.
>>>>> Nowadays,
>>>>> plyr comes close.
>>>>>
>>>>> The concept of environment. With S it was worse, though.
>>>>>
>>>>> That you cannot change values "passed by reference". I noted that
>>>>> the latter
>>>>> is no problem for students who have not worked with c(++/#)
>>>>> before. That
>>>>> there is only one return-result in functions.
>>>>>
>>>>> "[" and the likes as an operator.
>>>>>
>>>>> 10 years ago, when I started, the message was: S4 is the future,
>>>>> S3 is
>>>>> legacy. So I learned S4. Only to never use is in self-written code
>>>>> later.
>>>>> Might be different for BioConductor people.
>>>>>
>>>>> That sometimes you can use vectors not in data= (lattice), and
>>>>> sometimes not
>>>>> (ggplot2). Still a VERY confusing inconsistency.
>>>>>
>>>>> The "why-does-this-not-print" FAQ.
>>>>>
>>>>> Why does par(oma..) not work with lattice?
>>>>>
>>>>> Dieter
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> ______________________________________________
>>>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>
>>
>> [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>>
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>> 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.
>>
>
>
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Thomas E Adams
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