R exercices

R is in the broad family of functional languages -- if your student is
on board with the statistical capabilities of R, he might benefit from
looking at one of the classic tutorials for those while doing the
exercises in R. SICP is a classic, but the syntax doesn't match: maybe
the python version works
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp12/book/index.html :
alternatively, think Python or think Complexity (both online) provide
another (less difficult) exposition. However, take these options with
a grain of salt: if your student learns R this way, he'll get some bad
R habits that will take a long time to break: I'd highly advise
against any solution that suggests he do the

*
**
***

puzzle with nested loops: performance in later programming assignments
will be terrible. Better to learn good habits now: lapply(1:n,
function(x) cat(rep("*", n), "\n")

Alternatively, working through something like Project Euler in R will
require a little more self-starting, but might be more rewarding after
he masters the basics of syntax. (just what's given in a first read
through the standard intro to R document)

Finally, Matloff's Art of R programming is probably exactly what
you're looking for, but isn't free.

Hope this helps, (and my strong advice is options 2 or 3)

Michael

On Fri, Apr 20, 2012 at 10:05 AM, cgenolin <cgenolin at u-paris10.fr> wrote:

Thanks for your answer.

Yes, it is quite different from what I am looking for which will be more
something like :

--- 8< -----

Exercice 1: wrote a function that compute the surface of a rectangle

Exercice 2: wrote a function that compute factorial n (whithout using the
function factorial)

Exercice 3: wrote a function, that given a n, will draw a triangle of "*".
Example with n=5

*
**
***
****
*****

--- 8< -----

The first exemple is about writing a (very) simple function and returning
the result ; the second
need the use of a loop. The third will need two loops (for a beginer).

And so on, on various topic.

Christophe

Are you familiar with R Inferno? This is a programming-oriented
tutorial for R by the statistician Patric Burns. He has generously
placed it as a pdf online for free
(http://www.burns-stat.com/pages/Tutor/R_inferno.pdf [4]); you could

also
purchase a copy. Of course this will be more than just a few practice
exercises (a lot more, and actually, I'm not sure there are any
exercises but you can certainly follow along with the examples).
Nonetheless, it may still be right up your alley. There are other
resources for learning the programming side of R, but only a few that
are as good, and none other free, so far as I know. If this is really
different from what you're looking for, you may want to reply with more
detail.

Hope that helps. -Jeff

On 4/20/2012 7:41 AM, cgenolin wrote:

Hi the list, I am looking for some exercices for a PhD student that
start to learn R. He already "read" some tutorial, but now he needs
some practice. He does *not* need to learn any statistical tools ; he
just needs to work on programmation concept. So I am looking for some
exercice sheet that will, for example, focus on : - structuring the
data (data.frame / list / matrix / ...) - using controle syntax (for /
if / while / function) - reading data - ... Any link for this kind of
material? Sincerely Christophe [[alternative HTML version deleted]]

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