[R] Loop: noob question

[David Winsemius]

On Aug 5, 2011, at 1:50 PM, Ken H wrote:

> That's a good point Josh is correct,
> Its the R Bible because its the size of the Bible and serves as a  
> very good
> reference.

Some people apparently think so [assuming here that you  are referring  
to Crawley.] My experience is less favorable. When I tried to use it,  
it often leaves me without a workable answer or had misleading advice  
because of its loose  use of terminology. It frequently generates  
confusing  questions to this list because of its reliance on attach().

I thought MASS was a better book to learn R from.  Yes, I know it's  
not supposed to be an introductory book, but it has enough to use it  
as such when used in combination with the help pages. (Every(noob)ody  
does use the help pages, right?)


> I agree that it is definitely not a first blush kind of book. I
> second the regression book, it is excellent.
> Cryer and Chan Time Series Analysis with Applications in R is pretty  
> good if
> you're into that kind of thing...
> Did not know about the data manipulation or graphics books, I'll  
> definitely
> be checking those out.
>
>  Thanks for the info,
>          Ken
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 1:16 PM, Joshua Wiley  
> <jwiley.psych at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, Aug 5, 2011 at 9:20 AM, Ken H <vicvoncastle at gmail.com> wrote:
>> [snip]
>>>  And that should be it, as far as relevant reading
>>> Peter Daalgard's Introductory Statistics with R is very good if  
>>> you do
>> not
>>> know other programming languages.
>>
>> I would strongly second this.  It is a very nice book.  What book to
>> read depends a bit exactly what your goals are---data manipulation?
>> Statistics (and then what kind)?  Programming?  etc.
>>
>> For statistics beyond Peter Dalgaard's book, I like John Fox's  
>> Applied
>> Regression with Companion to Applied Regression (which uses R and is
>> also the 'car' package).
>>
>> I have been pretty happy with Phil Spector's book Data Manipulation  
>> with R.
>>
>> For graphics in R I would suggest ggplot2 by Hadley Wickham or  
>> lattice
>> by Deepayan Sarkar (they are both books and packages).
>>
>> For programming I would look at S Programming by Venables & Ripley.
>>
>>> Crowleys R Book is the Bible as it were, and is very very good.
>> Electronic
>>> copies are available.
>>
>> The R Book is very large, but it has some problems in my opinion.  It
>> uses some styles that are often okay, but can cause problems (e.g.,
>> using attach, using function names for data).  I would turn elsewhere
>> first.  All of the other books I recommended (except Data  
>> Manipulation
>> with R) are written by people who also develop and maintain R Core or
>> substantial R packages (i.e., they are experts in what they are
>> talking about).
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Josh
>>
>>
>> --
>> Joshua Wiley
>> Ph.D. Student, Health Psychology
>> Programmer Analyst II, ATS Statistical Consulting Group
>> University of California, Los Angeles
>> https://joshuawiley.com/
>>
>
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David Winsemius, MD
West Hartford, CT