Comment 1 raises a real issue. R is just a tool. Too often people do confuse the tool with the real skill that the people who use it should have. There are plenty of questions on R-help that demonstrate this confusion. It's well worth keeping in mind and acting upon if you can see a problem emerging, but I would not take it quite at face value and abandon R on those grounds.
Comment 2 is one of those comments that belongs to a very particular period of time, one that passes as we look on. It reminds me of the time I tried to introduce some new software into my courses, (back in the days when I was a teacher, long, long ago...). The students took to it like ducks to water, but my colleagues on the staff were very slow to adapt, and some never did. Also, R wins every time on price! Bill Venables CSIRO Laboratories PO Box 120, Cleveland, 4163 AUSTRALIA Office Phone (email preferred): +61 7 3826 7251 Fax (if absolutely necessary): +61 7 3826 7304 Mobile: +61 4 8819 4402 Home Phone: +61 7 3286 7700 mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cmis.csiro.au/bill.venables/ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Arin Basu Sent: Monday, 11 February 2008 1:41 PM To: r-help@r-project.org Subject: [R] Using R in a university course: dealing with proposal comments Hi All, I am scheduled to teach a graduate course on research methods in health sciences at a university. While drafting the course proposal, I decided to include a brief introduction to R, primarily with an objective to enable the students to do data analysis using R. It is expected that enrolled students of this course have all at least a formal first level introduction to quantitative methods in health sciences and following completion of the course, they are all expected to either evaluate, interpret, or conduct primary research studies in health. The course would be delivered over 5 months, and R was proposed to be taught as several laboratory based hands-on sessions along with required readings within the coursework. The course proposal went to a few colleagues in the university for review. I received review feedbacks from them; two of them commented about inclusion of R in the proposal. In quoting parts these mails, I have masked the names/identities of the referees, and have included just part of the relevant text with their comments. Here are the comments: Comment 1: "In my quick glance, I did not see that statistics would be taught, but I did see that R would be taught. Of course, R is a statistics programme. I worry that teaching R could overwhelm the class. Or teaching R would be worthless, because the students do not understand statistics. " (Prof LR) Comment 2: Finally, on a minor point, why is "R" the statistical software being used? SPSS is probably more widely available in the workplace - certainly in areas of social policy etc. " (Prof NB) I am interested to know if any of you have faced similar questions from colleagues about inclusion of R in non-statistics based university graduate courses. If you did and were required to address these concerns, how you would respond? TIA, Arin Basu ______________________________________________ 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.
