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Useful books for learning the R software and the S programming language

6 messages · Robert Wilk, Steve_Friedman at nps.gov, Peter Dalgaard +3 more

Original
Steve_Friedman at nps.gov
# 
Look here to start.

http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html


Steve Friedman Ph. D.
Spatial Statistical Analyst
Everglades and Dry Tortugas National Park
950 N Krome Ave (3rd Floor)
Homestead, Florida 33034

Steve_Friedman at nps.gov
Office (305) 224 - 4282
Fax     (305) 224 - 4147


                                                                           
             "Robert Wilk"                                                 
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                                       [R] Useful books for learning the R 
             01/12/2009 03:36          software and the S programming      
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any useful books for learning the R statistical software?
are they pricey?

and if the books recommended focus on S, how compatible will they be for
someone learning R?

thank you in advance for your help.


P.S.
specialized survey statistical procedures? Is R good at that?


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Peter Dalgaard
#
Robert Wilk wrote:
Many. "Useful" depends on the reader, though, so look around. Here's a 
starting point

http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html

(modesty should forbid me to point at item 18 on the list and the fact 
that Amazon US has it currently 19% discounted....)

In general R books are cheaper than statistical monographs, but more 
expensive than the large market computer science books.
Such books are strongly outnumbered by now. One important book from that 
group is Venables+Ripley's Modern Applied Statistics with S explicitly 
addresses R issues.
Not R in itself, but the "survey" package for it is rumoured to be state 
of the art, and its author has a book on it in its final stages.
Carlos Guerra
# 
Robert,

I have Peter's book and I think it can be a very good place to start  
from... dispite the discount... :)

If you like spatial analysis you can try to look for Roger Bivand et  
al. "Applied Spatial Data Analysis with R", If you are into something  
else try the "Use R" collection from Springer... you may find  
something not that "pricey" that you can use.

Best regards
Carlos

Em 2009/01/12, ?s 22:07, Peter Dalgaard escreveu:
David Winsemius
#
On Jan 12, 2009, at 3:36 PM, Robert Wilk wrote:

            

      
      
      
    

        
Compared to medical texts, they are dirt cheap.

            

      
      
      
    

        
Many are available for R these days. It used to be that MASS editions  
1 through 4 by Venables and Ripley were the canonical starting points,  
but in recent years Dalgaard and other have contributed efforts at  
intro and intermediate texts. Cutting and pasting from the R-books page:
http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html

[18] 	Peter Dalgaard. Introductory Statistics with R.
[49] 	John Verzani. Using R for Introductory Statistics.
[48] 	Michael J. Crawley. Statistics: An Introduction using R.
[62] 	William N. Venables and Brian D. Ripley. Modern Applied  
Statistics with S. Fourth Edition. (mentions only S in the title but I  
believe that where differences exist, they are pointed out in this  
edition.)
[63] 	John Fox. An R and S-Plus Companion to Applied Regression.
[65] 	Frank E. Harrell. Regression Modeling Strategies, with  
Applications to Linear Models, Survival Analysis and Logistic  
Regression. (I don't think Harrell intended this as a tutorial but I  
can't resist a plug. Alzola and Harrell have published a useful book  
length guide:
http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/twiki/pub/Main/RS/sintro.pdf

And Kuhnert and Venables have also written a book length pdf:
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Kuhnert+Venables-R_Course_Notes.zip

            

      
      
      
    

        
See whether Lumley's survey package functions are sufficient.  
Knowledgeable people have opined that they are more complete than what  
is available in SAS.

http://faculty.washington.edu/tlumley/survey/

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      Rau, Roland
    

    

      
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Hi,

if I may add my 2 cents.
- The most important thing is to have a real problem/question you want
to solve. Just "trying to learn" is very difficult because you might
encounter some problems and if this is not a problem you *have* to
solve, I would have the tendency to skip this particular problem.
- Have a look at "An Introduction to R". This manual is shipped with
every R distribution. Also have a look at the Data Import/Export Manual
(also shipped with R). With real problems usually you have already a
data-set which you need to read/load.
- If you want to buy yourself only one book, I would recommend the
Venables & Ripley: Modern Applied Statistics with S ("MASS"). It covers
many, many topics such as GLMs, survival analysis, time series analysis,
.... If you know already what kind of statistical analysis you want to
perform, this is the ideal book because it summarizes the statistical
theory and shows how this is implemented in R. (And in case that R and
S-Plus differ, MASS tells you how). Peter Dalgaard's "An Introduction to
R" is also an excellent but. It requires less from the reader than MASS.
Maybe have a look at both and then decide for yourself (sorry, those are
the only two R books I have).
- Make yourself familiar with the help functions in R. They might look
strange in the beginning, but they are incredibly helpful. Besides the
great example section, I consider the "See Also" section to be very
helpful: when you are not exactly sure if the current help page is what
you are looking for, quite often I found the function I actually needed
mentioned there.
- Don't try to "translate" from other statistics packages. This might be
particularly difficult. When I started with R, I was looking for
instance for "what is the equivelant R function of SPSS's 'recode'?".
Rather try to formulate the problem in English words and then search for
it in the R-Help archives. Furthermore, for me, personally, "S Poetry"
by Patrick Burns was a joy to read and it was the best tutorial for
subscripting (Chapter 1.3).
http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/spoetry.html (I am looking forward to
read his "Inferno" as well.)

I hope this helps a bit,
Roland

            

      
      
      
    

        

      
      
    

        
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