Forwarded message: > From: Albyn Jones <[email protected]> > > You should post basic R questions to the R-help list; > this list is intended for discussion of the use of R in > teaching.
Albyn, could you tell us more about what is on that list? Some time ago I raised the possibility of an email list for those who want to use R in teaching introductory courses. The idea was passed on and within a couple days this list was born. (I assumed causality, but it may have been coincidence;-) I would have made the list open to any question from anyone using R in an introductory course. Perhaps there is a problem due to bimodality in the potential audience. Some are old hands at R and now want to use it in the classroom. Others may have never used it before and are now trying to teach with it. I am not on the R-help list but wonder how much of the content there overlaps an introductory statistics course? Or how much would be over the head of a beginner? (I think most of the R documentation is well beyond the level of an introductory course, and pretty overwhelming and incomprehensible to a beginner, so I am hoping there is SOME place where beginners can get simple answers to simple questions without becoming Unix gurus or programmers first.) For anyone wondering why a non-R-guru such as myself might be on this list (or have suggested its creation)... I teach online in a context where we cannot buy a site license to provide each student with software. They have to either use whatever their employer provides (if anything), or pay for software out of their own pocket, normally at full single-copy prices. R is attractive because it is free. It also makes sense because our introductory courses (at least originally) only exist to prepare students for more advanced courses where R is preferred for its power or programmability. So, having created the introductory courses themselves, I then created student manuals for Minitab (because I already knew it), Data Desk (because it comes with the textbook), and R (for reasons already given). In creating the R materials, I encountered others trying to get started with R while using it in an introductory course, and hence this list. -------> First-time AP Stats. teacher? Help is on the way! See http://courses.ncssm.edu/math/Stat_Inst/Stats2007/Bob%20Hayden/Relief.html Robert W. Hayden in the old library at 212 Main Street (P. O. Box 450) North Troy, VT 05859 phone (802) 988-2587 web site http://statland.org/ email bob statland.org (add your own "@" and save me some spam) _______________________________________________ [email protected] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-sig-teaching
