Hi All: A few years ago, we provisionally switched to R for our intro stats and lab methods courses, largely because we've turned over our departmental stats teaching to a new cross-disciplinary program in quantitative methods that uses R (this is part of a big university-wide initiative on quantitative methods). On the positive side, the reports are that our undergraduates are able to learn the basics using R. On the negative side, the problem is that when they enter our labs for research (as many or most of them do given that we are at a research-intensive university), most have no SPSS experience and hence require a great deal of additional training. The problem is that few faculty members in psychology, myself included, know R - almost all of us use SPSS - so this transition is creating problems for both undergraduates and faculty members (not to mention graduate students and postdocs, who often end up having to do the extra training for the undergraduates).
We will soon be reevaluating the provisional decision to switch to R, and may end up reversing it. I'm not sure. I do know that at least some of our faculty have expressed misgivings. ..Scott Scott O. Lilienfeld, Ph.D. Professor Department of Psychology Emory University Atlanta, Georgia 30322 From: drnanjo [mailto:drna...@aol.com] Sent: Friday, August 22, 2014 7:54 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: Re: [tips] statistics teaching: SPSS vs R R appears to require a fair amount of programming experience. This makes it unwieldy to teach to undergraduates who tend to struggle with the more familiar and Excel like structure of SPSS. I appreciate that SPSS has paralleled the trajectory of textbooks in our business (constant frequent updates of dubious merit and obscene cost bloating) but my sense is that if we switch to R at least in its current build we will spend all the lab time during the term teaching how to read it and the run only the the most basic quantitative processes. I don't think it's a realistic alternative for lab courses in the lower division at this time. Nancy Melucci Long Beach CA -----Original Message----- From: Yvonnick Noel <yvonnick.n...@uhb.fr<mailto:yvonnick.n...@uhb.fr>> To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) <tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:tips@fsulist.frostburg.edu>> Sent: Thu, Aug 21, 2014 7:56 am Subject: Re: [tips] statistics teaching: SPSS vs R Michael, > Yvonnick, > > I'm curious about AtelieR and RSSTATS that you wrote. Are these available to the public? > Sure. You will find them available for download from the standard R repositories: http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/R2STATS/index.html http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/AtelieR/index.html Best, Yvonnick --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: drna...@aol.com<mailto:drna...@aol.com>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=12993.aba36cc3760e0b1c6a655f019a68b878&n=T&l=tips&o=38026 or send a blank email to leave-38026-12993.aba36cc3760e0b1c6a655f019a68b...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-38026-12993.aba36cc3760e0b1c6a655f019a68b...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: slil...@emory.edu<mailto:slil...@emory.edu>. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13509.d0999cebc8f4ed4eb54d5317367e9b2f&n=T&l=tips&o=38039 (It may be necessary to cut and paste the above URL if the line is broken) or send a blank email to leave-38039-13509.d0999cebc8f4ed4eb54d5317367e9...@fsulist.frostburg.edu<mailto:leave-38039-13509.d0999cebc8f4ed4eb54d5317367e9...@fsulist.frostburg.edu> --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: arch...@jab.org. To unsubscribe click here: http://fsulist.frostburg.edu/u?id=13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df5d5&n=T&l=tips&o=38040 or send a blank email to leave-38040-13090.68da6e6e5325aa33287ff385b70df...@fsulist.frostburg.edu
