Transferring R results to word prosessors
At 06:09 10.02.2006 -0500, Doran, Harold wrote:
I didn't follow this thread entirely, but I did make a LaTeX recommendation and I know that wasn't what you were asking for. But, if I may, let me respond to the ideas you present below in an attempt to be somewhat persuasive.
No, you are correct, I was not looking for a LaTex solution. I would never want to try to wean my students from an office type package. That would not be worth the trouble -- for me. They should find out about these things by themseves. For my own part, I am curious, and will probably have a look at it.
IMHO, this are horrible inefficiencies of SPSS and other packages, not virtues. To do what you are suggesting requires that one work in two environments, word and SPSS. If the researcher changes their analysis or wants to tweak the data, then you rerun the analysis, go back to SPSS copy and paste again. Why would someone want to do this when a much more efficient method exists?
Hmm. I would think that most users handle a number of applications for different purposes. I do not expect R to handle my e-mail, nor do I expect a spreadsheet to do text formatting. In itself, that is not a good argument IMHO. As to the trouble with cut and paste, well, I do not do that operation that often. But I do want things do be simple, simply to avoid wasting time explaing.
Instead, with Sweave, you embed your R code inside the LaTeX document and work in a *single* environment. There is no need to copy and paste and if the data or analysis changes, you update your document very easily saving time, effort, and room for errors. In addition, the tables look much better than word, which (again IMHO) is an aggregiously bad program to begin with.
I have always liked the formatting of the documents I have recognized as being formatted with LaTex. And the Sweave concept seems very interesting. I have never heard of that system before, so thank you for mentioning it. I will have a look at it.
Using this method, you can place any R code in the document, including graphics, tables (say with xtable) or anything. There is never a need to copy and paste as there is a wonderful, seemless effort between the two programs. Because LaTeX has options for presentations, one can easily create slides that look much better than ppt using a similar method saving hours of effort in my experience. So, instead of getting R to do what other less sophisticated programs do, which is an effort backwards into the old, and inefficient, ways of doing things, R is moving progressively forward and offers these similar capabilities, but in a much more efficient manner. Last, if your students are doing technical work, I would suggest they should be familiar with TeX anyhow. It is free, easy to use and learn, offers significant advances alongside R, and equations actually look like equations. BTW, creating and numbering equations in word is about the most difficult effort on earth!
This is students of psychology. Not technical work, and the number of formulas per 100 research reports and paper would be closer to 1 per 100 papers than 1 per 10 papers. They have been using Office type programs almost since Kindergarten. That is a simple fact of life (for me at least). Tom