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2009-02-08
I'm still learning R and making some progress. I wanted to blog about four things helping make this possible:
1. BOOK - Introductory Statistics with R by Peter Dalgaard. I highly recommend this book for anyone just starting out with R. There are some overly concise sections that will confuse you the first time through. But overall it's a great survey of the R language, giving you a taste of what R can do and teaching some statistics along the way.
2. BOOK - A Handbook of Statistical Analyses Using R by Brian S. Everitt and Torsten Hothorn. Here we have a recipe book of sorts for using R in a variety of applications. 14 of the 15 chapters show you step-by-step methods for analyzing real life data sets. The best chapter though is Chapter 1, an Introduction to R. If I had to teach someone R and was limited to 20 pages of one book (a real life scenario, no doubt!), these are the 20 pages I would use.
3. WEBSITE - Sportsci.org R Tutorial. OK, this is actually a Yahoo group. But the group owner is determined to introduce even the most computer phobic person to R. If you don't want to spring for a book, then download his PDF tutorials and get to work. He's a good writer and very kind soul. His tutorials are completely accessible and free of jargon.
4. PACKAGE - R Commander. This is a graphical user interface for R that allows to run commands from a menu. Ultimately you want to work exclusively from the command line. But this package allows beginners to focus on using R instead of learning R. The best thing, though, is that every time you issue a command from a menu, the corresponding command line input is displayed. So it does indeed help you learn R. I am finding R Commander extremely helpful in my graduate school work. I am required to use R to complete my assignments, but the professor is not teaching us how to use R. R Commander makes it easier for me to use R efficiently to complete my assignments and focus on the material (instead of using all my time reading the R manual.)
2:18 PM
 
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