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style question: returning multiple arguments - structure orlist

3 messages · Jonathan Baron, Frank E Harrell Jr, A.J. Rossini

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Jonathan Baron
# 
This sounds like a good book, but I want to make a pedagogical
point.  Although transfer of learning does occur, the last 100
years of research have tended to support the view that it is
incomplete and that it also works in both directions.  In my
youth, they tried to get me to learn Latin because it would "make
French easier."  (I refused, and learned German.)  The fact is
that learning French would make Latin easier, just as much as the
reverse.  Thus, if the target is S/R, teach S/R first.  It will
help students learn other languages just as much as the reverse.

Of course, the availability of good teaching materials is an
issue.  I plan to work on this in the fall, when I force the
students in our introductory graduate methods class to learn R,
both as a beginning cure for computer illiteracy and as a useful
tool in its own right - more useful for the average psychology
researcher, I think, than C or anything else.


Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania
Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron
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Frank E Harrell Jr
# 
Jonathan,

That makes a good deal of sense.  I look forward to 
future postings of your experiences this fall.

One thing that I have learned is a mistake is to try
to "ease" the students into S by having them
spend the first 2-3 weeks of the course using only
the S-Plus graphical user interface.  From now on I'm going
directly to the command line.

Frank
Jonathan Baron wrote:

  
    

      
      
    

  


  


      

    

    

      
      

        


  

        

      A.J. Rossini
    

    

      
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f> One thing that I have learned is a mistake is to try to "ease"
    f> the students into S by having them spend the first 2-3 weeks of
    f> the course using only the S-Plus graphical user interface.
    f> From now on I'm going directly to the command line.

On a similar but completely different note -- our computer orientation
for new grad students gives it to them "hard"; it's a 2-3 hour session
(negotiating time for this coming year), which for the last few, has
discussed using S-PLUS and LaTeX via XEmacs.  This is the first time
that some of them have used a command line interface, nearly solidly,
for 3 hours

Sure, there are much simpler methods, but if they learn the harder
(and more powerful) approach, there will be no need to fall back.  And
those who just can't get it (there are always a few), can back down to
pico for editing, LyX/TeXmacs for WP'ing, or even revert to Windows or
similar click-and-destruct interfaces; there is no need to "train" for
those, esp given the prolific business for tools under Microsoft, of
"how-to" books.

They won't learn everything in a quick session, but we have ended up
with a fair number of students who go into their first fall quarter
thinking that the right way to run S is "xemacs -f S", and never look
back.  Also, using AUC-TeX to write/generate/print LaTeX documents is
fairly natural, with a few hints (esp with x-symbol's MS-eqn editor
style point-and-click "table of symbols", for equation writing).

Student backgrounds have changed (i.e. more computer usage, less
command line familiarity), even during the very few years that I've
run this session...

The session isn't a complete success, but we do get a good number of
people thinking about the value of power vs. ease of use for tools.

best,
-tony