Message-ID: <f8e6ff050609190623j3016bc3ej1cb99498d86be388@mail.gmail.com>
Date: 2006-09-19T13:23:46Z
From: Hadley Wickham
Subject: Help for methods
In-Reply-To: <Pine.LNX.4.64.0609191414430.21406@gannet.stats.ox.ac.uk>
> > But you also have to be able to identify if it is a S3 function or an
> > S4 method (or an ordinary function).
>
> Why not just type ?summary, which as I said, does tell you up front?
If R can save the novice user a couple of steps in their search for
help, why not do it?
Getting documentation on what the summary of an mle object does is
another example. I tried:
* summary.mle and summary.mle-class (of course I knew those wouldn't
work, but nothing in the documentation of mle suggests that it
wouldn't)
* mle?summary and then summary?mle in case I had gotten it back to front
* I finally run the example in mle and used ?summary(fit)
> > The reason I find this so much of a problem is that when you are
> > teaching R, one of the first things you want to do is teach your
> > students how to use help. However, you can't teach them to use it
> > effectively until they know an awful lot about how the call semantics
> > of R.
>
> In many years of teaching S/R I have not found that to be a problem.
In my one year of teaching R I have. How do you teach people how to use help?
Hadley