Hi Ranjan: I think this is an important and well-posed question. AFAIR, sciviews provides a fairly sophisticated GUI for R, but I haven't looked at it in a while. The two packages I'd suggest you look at are John Fox's R Commander (package Rcmdr...and note all the plug-ins!) and Ian Fellows' Deducer package, both of which use a more sophisticated GUI than the R GUI console in Windows.
Deducer runs on top of Java; it needs both rJava and JGR. If you're using 64-bit R, you also need 64-bit Java installed; if you're content with 32-bit R, then 32-bit Java is all you need. I know that Deducer runs pretty smoothly on 32-bit R, but for 64-bit, you'll need to be a bit more vigilant about the Java interface. For classroom purposes, I would think 32-bit R is sufficient. R Commander uses Tcl/Tk to program the GUI, and since a version of Tcl/Tk comes bundled with binary versions of R, you don't have to worry too much about the interface. Take notice that both packages have plug-in packages that you can load on top of the standard GUI. I find it a little disheartening that in this era, engineers in training are averse to programming, though. Sigh.. HTH, Dennis On Wed, Jan 15, 2014 at 7:22 PM, Ranjan Maitra <maitra.mbox.igno...@inbox.com> wrote: > Dear friends, > > OK, I did not think that it would ever come down to this, but I am > here with a question on what would be the best point-and-click approach > to using R in the classroom in a way that the students can also follow > and exhibit (on their own). > > So let me explain: I am teaching an introductory-level statistics class > for introductory first- and second-year civil and industrial > engineering students. This is a basic class following the book (not > important): Basic Engineering Data Collection and Analysis by Stephen B. > Vardeman and John Marcus. The class is very basic, and has > traditionally relied on JMP and Excel (less prevalent) to illustrate > data examples. I don't want to use either because I am a proponent of > OSS, and also because I find these two too cumbersome to handle. Also, > I don't think I have the time (and the students do not have the > inclination, I am told) to handle even basic interactive programming. > So, I was wondering if people with more experience would have > suggestions on what would be best to use. > > I apologize if this has been discussed quite a bit here, but as I said > before, I did not think that it would come to this, so I basically did > not pay much attention. > > Thanks very much for suggestions and experiences! > Best wishes, > Ranjan > > > > -- > Important Notice: This mailbox is ignored: e-mails are set to be > deleted on receipt. Please respond to the mailing list if appropriate. > For those needing to send personal or professional e-mail, please use > appropriate addresses. > > ____________________________________________________________ > GET FREE SMILEYS FOR YOUR IM & EMAIL - Learn more at > http://www.inbox.com/smileys > Works with AIM®, MSN® Messenger, Yahoo!® Messenger, ICQ®, Google Talk™ and > most webmails > > ______________________________________________ > R-help@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@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.