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The use of R Commander for beginning students and newbies
3 messages · Dr. Thomas W. MacFarland, John Fox, Ista Zahn
Dear Tom, As you can imagine, I watched your video with interest and found it quite impressive. I do have a couple of comments and a question. The comments: You change a numeric ID variable into a factor with several thousand levels. I think that it would be more natural and efficient to assign the ID variable as the row names of the data set, which you can do via "Data -> Active data set -> Set case names". I also noticed that you run the Rcmdr from the RGUI MDI (multiple-document interface). This works better than it used to, but I think that it's still preferable to use the SDI (single-document interface). The question: You alluded repeatedly to the necessity to close the R graphics-device window after each plot in order "not to have the plots pile up on each other" (a paraphrase, but I think close to what you said). I'm not sure what you mean. In most cases, a new plot should just replace the previous one in the graphics-device window, unless you've turned plot recording on, in which case you should be able to page between plots. I've never had any trouble in either case, and am interested to learn what the problem is. Best, John ----------------------------------------------- John Fox Senator McMaster Professor of Social Statistics Department of Sociology McMaster University Hamilton, Ontario, Canada
-----Original Message----- From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Dr. Thomas W. MacFarland Sent: Thursday, February 07, 2013 3:25 PM To: r-help at r-project.org Subject: [R] The use of R Commander for beginning students and newbies Everyone: In the last few months I've noticed an increasing number of questions to this list from students who are new to the use of R and who have limited (in any) local support on R and specifically support for R syntax. My text (http://www.springer.com/statistics/social+sciences+%26+law/book/978-1- 4614- 2133-7) from last year was specific to the use of R syntax but given recent feedback I see that perhaps those of us who teach beginning students need to give a bit more attention to R Commander and/or other GUIs, to help students build on their confidence so that we can start them out with some immediately successful outcomes. Then, with experience we can move them over to the use of R syntax, which is certainly far more robust. For beginning students, newbies, and any others who may be interested, I've opened for guest access an Elluminate-Blackboard video on the use of R Commander. The URL follows and a password is not required: https://mako.nova.edu/webapps/bb-collaborate- bb_bb60/guest.recording.launch. event?uid=476978d4-00c4-488e-98a3-495201e17f5f The full video is about 1 hour and 20 minutes. You can make the active screen (right side of the screen) larger by moving it around, minimizing the status column (left side of the screen). Best wishes. Tom MacFarland ---------- Thomas W. MacFarland, Ed.D. Senior Research Associate; Institutional Effectiveness and Associate Professor Nova Southeastern University Voice 954-262-5395 tommac at nova.edu [[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.
Hi Tom, I also teach R to newbies (materials at http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/rtc/filter_by/r-0), and I've found RStudio (http://rstudio.com/ide) a huge help, and much less intimidating than the Windows GUI. File and object browsers, integrated help window, syntax highlighting and code completion are some of the features that students like. Not trying to discourage your use of Rcommander, just thought I'd share my positive experience teaching with Rstudio in case you have not checked it out yet. Best, Ista On Thu, Feb 7, 2013 at 3:25 PM, Dr. Thomas W. MacFarland
<tommac at nova.edu> wrote:
Everyone: In the last few months I've noticed an increasing number of questions to this list from students who are new to the use of R and who have limited (in any) local support on R and specifically support for R syntax. My text (http://www.springer.com/statistics/social+sciences+%26+law/book/978-1-4614- 2133-7) from last year was specific to the use of R syntax but given recent feedback I see that perhaps those of us who teach beginning students need to give a bit more attention to R Commander and/or other GUIs, to help students build on their confidence so that we can start them out with some immediately successful outcomes. Then, with experience we can move them over to the use of R syntax, which is certainly far more robust. For beginning students, newbies, and any others who may be interested, I've opened for guest access an Elluminate-Blackboard video on the use of R Commander. The URL follows and a password is not required: https://mako.nova.edu/webapps/bb-collaborate-bb_bb60/guest.recording.launch. event?uid=476978d4-00c4-488e-98a3-495201e17f5f The full video is about 1 hour and 20 minutes. You can make the active screen (right side of the screen) larger by moving it around, minimizing the status column (left side of the screen). Best wishes. Tom MacFarland ---------- Thomas W. MacFarland, Ed.D. Senior Research Associate; Institutional Effectiveness and Associate Professor Nova Southeastern University Voice 954-262-5395 tommac at nova.edu [[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.