We spend about 50 contact hours teaching our undergraduates the basics of R. Even that is not enough. It has been said that you need 100 hours to reach competency, and 1000 hours to master a subject. And the next stage is 10,000 hours to be an expert..
How much time has he invested in actually learning those skills? I was totting up the time we spend teaching X versus the amount of complaints we get that the students don't know X. There is a strong inverse correlation. Folk want a cheap easy fix and have been promised that with computers. It does exist but it has to be earned. You don't get cheap and easy for free. Dr David Martin Lecturer in Bioinformatics College of Life Sciences University of Dundee ________________________________________ From: Discuss <[email protected]> on behalf of Lex Nederbragt <[email protected]> Sent: 29 February 2016 20:43 To: Software Carpentry Discussion Subject: Re: [Discuss] RajLab: From reproducibility to over-reproducibility Hi all and thanks for the many responses. My feeling reading this post was about tools (partly echoing Greg): 'we' know 'all of us' should use the appropriate tool, e.g. version control (is that what you call the moral high-ground?). But for the novice, these tools/methods have steep learning curves, thus high upfront time investment, and no immediate benefit (!!!). There is a burden on 'us' to convince 'others' of the need to invest time to adopt these tools. I am not sure whether more convincing (how? Research-based evidence?) or training is the answer, versus much easier to learn and use tools. Lex _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org The University of Dundee is a registered Scottish Charity, No: SC015096 _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.software-carpentry.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.software-carpentry.org
