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How to google for R stuff?
18 messages · Kynn Jones, Jonathan Baron, Ian Fiske +13 more
See http://finzi.psych.upenn.edu/ for many options for searching for R stuff. If you type R into Google, the R home page usually comes up first. I was amazed when this happened 9 years ago. And now, if I type "R lmer" into Google (without the quotes), a whole bunch of relevant stuff comes up, although it isn't so systematically arranged as with the other search options. Jon
On 05/20/09 09:02, Kynn Jones wrote:
Hi! I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance. TIA! KJ [[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.
Jonathan Baron, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania Home page: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/~baron Editor: Judgment and Decision Making (http://journal.sjdm.org)
www.rseek.org is the best solution to this that I have found. Ian
kynn wrote:
Hi! I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance. TIA! KJ [[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.
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/How-to-google-for-R-stuff--tp23635068p23635296.html Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names
like
Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of
the
language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are
relevant.
But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by
itself
in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak.
There are loads of ways of finding information. Use the function RSiteSearch, or The R mail archive http://www.googlesyndicatedsearch.com/u/newcastlemaths RSeek http://www.rseek.org/ R Search http://www.dangoldstein.com/search_r.html The R Graph Gallery http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/ R Help Wiki http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php R manuals http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html FAQs http://cran.r-project.org/faqs.html Task Views http://cran.r-project.org/web/views/ News http://www.r-project.org/doc/Rnews/index.html Books http://www.r-project.org/doc/bib/R-books.html Cranberries http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/cranberries/ R-Forge (http://r-forge.r-project.org/) and Bioconductor ( http://www.bioconductor.org/GettingStarted) also have their own search tools. Regards, Richie. Mathematical Sciences Unit HSL ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ATTENTION: This message contains privileged and confidential inform...{{dropped:20}}
Kynn Jones wrote:
Hi! I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance. TIA! KJ [[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 Kynn, I've had this problem too in the beginning. Luckily, my personal experience has taught me that almost all relevant R-related information can be found either by searching directly through the archives of the different R-forums or by using the functions "RSiteSearch()" or "help.search()". The reference manuals provided with each package (easily accessible on CRAN) are also invaluable sources of information. Unfortunately, phrasing queries in a way that will yield relevant results is sometimes hard. Knowledge of the terminology mostly comes from experience, so patience is in order. Of course, as a last recourse, there's always the mailing list. Bottom line is, I suggest you try to avoid generic search engines and concentrate your efforts on the different R-forums (note that there are also package-specific forums). I suspect the more experienced R-users might have better strategies to propose though... Cheers,
*Luc Villandr?* /Biostatistician McGill University Health Center - Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute/
For Google searches, I find that throwing in the term cran on every search helps weed out irrelevant pages. For example, instead of r residuals I type r cran residuals --Chris Ryan ---- Original message ----
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:43:14 -0400 From: Luc Villandre <villandl at dms.umontreal.ca> Subject: Re: [R] How to google for R stuff? To: Kynn Jones <kynnjo at gmail.com> Cc: r-help at r-project.org Kynn Jones wrote:
Hi! I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance. TIA! KJ [[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 Kynn, I've had this problem too in the beginning. Luckily, my personal experience has taught me that almost all relevant R-related information can be found either by searching directly through the archives of the different R-forums or by using the functions "RSiteSearch()" or "help.search()". The reference manuals provided with each package (easily accessible on CRAN) are also invaluable sources of information. Unfortunately, phrasing queries in a way that will yield relevant results is sometimes hard. Knowledge of the terminology mostly comes from experience, so patience is in order. Of course, as a last recourse, there's always the mailing list. Bottom line is, I suggest you try to avoid generic search engines and concentrate your efforts on the different R-forums (note that there are also package-specific forums). I suspect the more experienced R-users might have better strategies to propose though... Cheers, -- *Luc Villandr?* /Biostatistician McGill University Health Center - Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute/
______________________________________________ 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.
There is also the relatively new "RSiteSearch" package. It's
"RSiteSearch.function" searches only help pages of contributed packages
but returns the result in a data.frame (of class "RSiteSearch") sorted
to put the most interesting package first with help pages sorted within
packages. If this package is installed, "system.file('doc',
'RSiteSearch.pdf', package='RSiteSearch')" will give you the location of
a 2-page description of the most important features of this package
including examples that work. Since that document was written, we've
added "|" and "&" for combining the objects returned by different
searches and "packageSum2" to add information from installed packages
not available from "RSiteSearch" itself.
For example, I'm giving an invited presentation on "Fitting
Nonlinear Differential Equations to Data in R" as part of a "Dynamics
Workshop" in Vancouver this June 4-6
(http://stat.sfu.ca/~dac5/workshop09/Welcome.html). To prepare for
that, I first did the following:
de <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equation")
des <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equations")
# With "de" and "des", each finds things missed by the other.
de. <- de | des # combine into one
sumDE <- packageSum2(de.) # add details on installed packages.
This helped me decide which packages I should look at first.
Hope this helps.
Spencer Graves
cryan at binghamton.edu wrote:
For Google searches, I find that throwing in the term cran on every search helps weed out irrelevant pages. For example, instead of r residuals I type r cran residuals --Chris Ryan ---- Original message ----
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:43:14 -0400
From: Luc Villandre <villandl at dms.umontreal.ca>
Subject: Re: [R] How to google for R stuff?
To: Kynn Jones <kynnjo at gmail.com>
Cc: r-help at r-project.org
Kynn Jones wrote:
Hi! I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance. TIA! KJ [[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 Kynn,
I've had this problem too in the beginning. Luckily, my personal
experience has taught me that almost all relevant R-related information
can be found either by searching directly through the archives of the
different R-forums or by using the functions "RSiteSearch()" or
"help.search()". The reference manuals provided with each package
(easily accessible on CRAN) are also invaluable sources of information.
Unfortunately, phrasing queries in a way that will yield relevant
results is sometimes hard. Knowledge of the terminology mostly comes
from experience, so patience is in order.
Of course, as a last recourse, there's always the mailing list. Bottom line is, I suggest you try to avoid generic search engines and concentrate your efforts on the different R-forums (note that there are also package-specific forums). I suspect the more experienced R-users might have better strategies to propose though... Cheers, -- *Luc Villandr?* /Biostatistician McGill University Health Center - Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute/
______________________________________________ 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.
______________________________________________ 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.
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I was having the same frustration so I made a Google custom search engine for Open Math Tools: http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=015659631714008342946:wolsniqtrxc It gives preferences to results from r-project.org, octave.org, maxima.sourceforge.net, and the mailing list archives from those projects. It also has some other smaller pages that contain tutorials for those tools. It includes results from the broader web as well, so if there is a highly ranked article from wikipedia or mathworld that will show up too. Here's a short write-up with example searches: http://j-stults.blogspot.com/2009/05/open-math-tools-custom-search-engine.html If any folks on the list out there have any suggestions or would like to be a 'contributor' on it post a reply with a site to add to the preference list , or click the 'volunteer to contribute' link on the search engine homepage. Good luck with your R searching.
On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Kynn Jones <kynnjo at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi! ?I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. ?With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. ?But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance. TIA! KJ ? ? ? ?[[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.
Joshua Stults Website: http://j-stults.blogspot.com
spencerg <spencer.graves <at> prodsyse.com> writes:
de <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equation")
des <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equations")
# With "de" and "des", each finds things missed by the other.
de. <- de | des # combine into one
sumDE <- packageSum2(de.) # add details on installed packages.
Should be PackageSum2(de.) Dieter
Dear Dieter:
Thanks for the correction. I failed to test the code as written
before I posted it.
Spencer Graves
Dieter Menne wrote:
spencerg <spencer.graves <at> prodsyse.com> writes:
de <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equation")
des <- RSiteSearch.function("differential equations")
# With "de" and "des", each finds things missed by the other.
de. <- de | des # combine into one
sumDE <- packageSum2(de.) # add details on installed packages.
Should be PackageSum2(de.) Dieter
______________________________________________ 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.
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Le mercredi 20 mai 2009 ? 09:02 -0400, Kynn Jones a ?crit :
Hi! I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance.
ISTR having this question or very close ones at least thrice in the last two months. Time for a FAQ entry ? (It does not seem to exist : I checked...) Emmanuel Charpentier
On 20/05/2009 10:01 AM, cryan at binghamton.edu wrote:
For Google searches, I find that throwing in the term cran on every search helps weed out irrelevant pages. For example, instead of r residuals I type r cran residuals
You are very picky. When I enter R residuals into Google, 8 out of the first 10 hits are for R topics. Isn't that good enough for you? I think this is true of most Google searches: the letter R most often means the R project. Duncan Murdoch
--Chris Ryan ---- Original message ----
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:43:14 -0400 From: Luc Villandre <villandl at dms.umontreal.ca> Subject: Re: [R] How to google for R stuff? To: Kynn Jones <kynnjo at gmail.com> Cc: r-help at r-project.org Kynn Jones wrote:
Hi! I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance. TIA! KJ [[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 Kynn, I've had this problem too in the beginning. Luckily, my personal experience has taught me that almost all relevant R-related information can be found either by searching directly through the archives of the different R-forums or by using the functions "RSiteSearch()" or "help.search()". The reference manuals provided with each package (easily accessible on CRAN) are also invaluable sources of information. Unfortunately, phrasing queries in a way that will yield relevant results is sometimes hard. Knowledge of the terminology mostly comes from experience, so patience is in order. Of course, as a last recourse, there's always the mailing list. Bottom line is, I suggest you try to avoid generic search engines and concentrate your efforts on the different R-forums (note that there are also package-specific forums). I suspect the more experienced R-users might have better strategies to propose though... Cheers, -- *Luc Villandr?* /Biostatistician McGill University Health Center - Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute/
______________________________________________ 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.
______________________________________________ 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.
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A couple more ideas... If you find reading code useful, try specifying filetype:r in Google (e.g., do.call filetype:r) For firefox users, the R wiki provides search tips here: http://wiki.r-project.org/rwiki/doku.php?id=tips:misc:firefox-search-plugins My preference is to keep RSeek in the top position of the firefox search bar so that on my windows box I can Ctrl-Tab to firefox, then Ctrl-K to search R sites. hth, Kingsford Jones
On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 3:05 PM, Kynn Jones <kynnjo at gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you all very much for the so many useful ideas and resources. KJ ? ? ? ?[[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.
You can also try: http://www.rseek.org/ Cheers
Duncan Murdoch wrote:
On 20/05/2009 10:01 AM, cryan at binghamton.edu wrote:
For Google searches, I find that throwing in the term cran on every search helps weed out irrelevant pages. For example, instead of r residuals I type r cran residuals
You are very picky. When I enter R residuals into Google, 8 out of the first 10 hits are for R topics. Isn't that good enough for you? I think this is true of most Google searches: the letter R most often means the R project. Duncan Murdoch
--Chris Ryan ---- Original message ----
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:43:14 -0400 From: Luc Villandre <villandl at dms.umontreal.ca> Subject: Re: [R] How to google for R stuff? To: Kynn Jones <kynnjo at gmail.com> Cc: r-help at r-project.org Kynn Jones wrote:
Hi! I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance. TIA! KJ [[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 Kynn, I've had this problem too in the beginning. Luckily, my personal experience has taught me that almost all relevant R-related information can be found either by searching directly through the archives of the different R-forums or by using the functions "RSiteSearch()" or "help.search()". The reference manuals provided with each package (easily accessible on CRAN) are also invaluable sources of information. Unfortunately, phrasing queries in a way that will yield relevant results is sometimes hard. Knowledge of the terminology mostly comes from experience, so patience is in order. Of course, as a last recourse, there's always the mailing list. Bottom line is, I suggest you try to avoid generic search engines and concentrate your efforts on the different R-forums (note that there are also package-specific forums). I suspect the more experienced R-users might have better strategies to propose though... Cheers, -- *Luc Villandr?* /Biostatistician McGill University Health Center - Montreal Children's Hospital Research Institute/
______________________________________________ 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.
______________________________________________ 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.
______________________________________________ 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.
one option could be to type into Google bar something like (for instance for the lme function): filetype R lm
On Wed, May 20, 2009 at 9:02 AM, Kynn Jones <kynnjo at gmail.com> wrote:
Hi! ?I'm new to R programming, though I've been programming in other languages for years. One thing I find most frustrating about R is how difficult it is to use Google (or any other search tool) to look for answers to my R-related questions. ?With languages with even slightly more distinctive names like Perl, Java, Python, Matlab, OCaml, etc., usually including the name of the language in the query is enough to ensure that the top hits are relevant. ?But this trick does not work for R, because the letter R appears by itself in so many pages, that the chaff overwhelms the wheat, so to speak. So I'm curious to learn what strategies R users have found to get around this annoyance. TIA! KJ ? ? ? ?[[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.