Good comments, Ivan.
I also have found StackOverflow to not be too helpful in a structured
conversation. I have had it and miss success with GitHub interactions.
*Stephen Dawson, DSL*
/Executive Strategy Consultant/
Business & Technology
+1 (865) 804-3454
http://www.shdawson.com <http://www.shdawson.com>
On 1/13/22 9:01 AM, Ivan Calandra wrote:
This is indeed a very valid question.
IMHO, I still think that these kind of package-specific questions should have a
space on the main R mailing list, as long as these questions are about how to
do something (coding), and not bug or feature requests. Regarding tidyverse and
ggplot2 (and the likes), many answers actually provide ways using different
packages (how many times have I seen the same question answered with base R,
data.table and dplyr?). This is a great way to learn.
And honestly, how many only use base R? Of course, everything can be done in
base R, but packages also belong to R, that's the way it works and why it works
so well. Reinventing the wheel is rarely a good solution.
Regarding other help platforms, GitHub is great for the package maintainers that spend
time on solving issues, but I myself feel bad to ask there "how to do that"
(help is not always good).
I gave up on StackOverflow. Everytime I tried, I either got treated as an idiot by persons who
didn't even read my questions (with answers like "do it" to questions like "I don't
know how to do it"), or I couldn't comment on my question to make it clearer because I was new
(which is ridiculous, it is when you are new that you need to be able to clarify the most!).
If people think it's tough to ask a question on the R mailing list because
beginners are not well-handled, they should try SO, it's much worse!
This is to say we should keep the R mailing list!
My $0.02
Ivan
--
Dr. Ivan Calandra
Imaging lab
RGZM - MONREPOS Archaeological Research Centre
Schloss Monrepos
56567 Neuwied, Germany
+49 (0) 2631 9772-243
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ivan_Calandra
________________________________
From: R-help <r-help-boun...@r-project.org> on behalf of Duncan Murdoch
<murdoch.dun...@gmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 13, 2022 2:25 PM
To: Kevin Thorpe; Jeff Newmiller
Cc: R Help Mailing List
Subject: Re: [R] (Off-Topic) Time for a companion mailing list for R packages?
Currently help for contributed packages is available on StackOverflow,
package-specific web sites and Github.
I rarely read package-specific (e.g. RStudio) web pages, and have only
posted questions there a few times, with generally unsatisfactory results.
Most package developers (including tidyverse ones) respond very
helpfully on Github, but to post there you need to already have a very
good idea of where the problem lies. It's not an appropriate place for
beginners to ask for help.
That leaves StackOverflow. It gets way too much traffic from people who
don't pose their questions well, but it has the advantage over a mailing
list that questions can be edited and improved (or deleted) after the
fact. We should be sending beginners there. And if you want to read
questions and help people, apply N95 filters to the questions: e.g. I
mainly read questions that have been unanswered and undeleted for an
hour or more.
Duncan Murdoch
On 13/01/2022 7:44 a.m., Kevin Thorpe wrote:
This is an interesting issue and something I have been thinking about raising
with my fellow volunteer moderators.
I honestly don�t know what the best solution is. Personally, I would loathe
having to check multiple web-forums/mailing lists to find an answer. New users
often do not appreciate the subtleties (i.e. RStudio is not R) and will
continue to post here. The frequent reply to questions outside base R that
inform them they are off-topic could come across as unfriendly. That could have
the side effect of making the community appear elitist. Folks are also often
referred to package maintainers but not all maintainers are equally responsive
to queries about their packages. In summary, it can be very hard for novice
users to get the help they need.
I appreciate the desire of many to keep the focus of this list narrow, yet
despite the narrow mandate there are many readers who can answer non-base R
questions, which is probably one of the reasons we see the questions. I wonder
if there would be an appetite to create a new list, R-package-help, that has a
broad mandate (as suggested by Avi). Naturally there is no guarantee that
specific questions about some esoteric package will be answered, but that�s a
different problem. On the other hand, why not expand the mandate of R-help
rather than going to the trouble of creating a new list? Like I said, I don�t
know.
Thanks for raising the issue.
Kevin
On Jan 12, 2022, at 11:24 PM, Jeff Newmiller <jdnew...@dcn.davis.ca.us> wrote:
TL;DR The people responsible for tidyverse don't think much of mailing lists.
IANAMLA (I am not mailing list admin) and I know some people get kind of heated
about these things, but my take is that this list _is_ about R so to be on
topic the question needs to be about R and how to get things done in R. Since
contributed packages are almost by definition creating capabilities linked with
specific problem domains or domain-specific-languages (DSLs), and there are
thousands of these, it isn't practical to support questions framed within those
DSLs here. It seems perfectly legitimate IMHO to mention such packages here, as
long as the question does not hinge on that package, and even to offer small
solutions to posed R problems using such packages. Others may disagree with my
perspective on this. Unfortunately all of this this subtlety is usually lost
upon newbies, much to the detriment of this list's reputation.
The responsibility to setup and manage support for contributed packages belongs to the
package maintainer. In the case of tidyverse, the general opinion of those people seems
to be that web forums avoid the "only unformatted info can be shared" nature of
traditional mailing lists, so mailing lists have AFAIK not been built or tended.
Unfortunately, they also try to "allow all topics" as much as possible in those
forums to minimize the appearance of unfriendliness to beginners, but my impression is
that this leads to such a wide range of topics that many posts don't get answered. I have
certainly found it to be just too much quantity to sift through, and I really am
selective about which portions of the tidyverse I work with anyway, so I don't hang out
there much at all.
On January 12, 2022 7:27:20 PM PST, Avi Gross via R-help <r-help@r-project.org>
wrote:
Respectfully, this forum gets lots of questions that include non-base R
components and especially packages in the tidyverse. Like it or not, the
extended R language is far more useful and interesting for many people and
especially those who do not wish to constantly reinvent the wheel.
And repeatedly, we get people reminding (and sometimes chiding) others for
daring to post questions or supply answers on what they see as a pure R list.
They have a point.
Yes, there are other places (many not being mailing lists like this one) where
we can direct the questions but why can't there be an official mailing list
alongside this one specifically focused on helping or just discussing R issues
related partially to the use of packages. I don't mean for people making a
package to share, just users who may be searching for an appropriate package or
using a common package, especially the ones in the tidyverse that are NOT GOING
AWAY just because some purists ...
I prefer a diverse set of ways to do things and base R is NOT enough for me,
nor frankly is R with all packages included as I find other languages suit my
needs at times for doing various things. If this group is for purists, fine.
Can we have another for the rest of us? Live and let live.
-----Original Message-----
From: Duncan Murdoch <murdoch.dun...@gmail.com>
To: Kai Yang <yangkai9...@yahoo.com>; R-help Mailing List <r-help@r-project.org>
Sent: Wed, Jan 12, 2022 3:22 pm
Subject: Re: [R] how to find the table in R studio
On 12/01/2022 3:07 p.m., Kai Yang via R-help wrote:
Hi all,
I created a function in R. It will be generate a table "temp". I can view it in
R studio, but I cannot find it on the top right window in R studio. Can someone tell me
how to find it in there? Same thing for f_table.
Thank you,
Kai
library(tidyverse)
f1 <- function(indata , subgrp1){
subgrp1 <- enquo(subgrp1)
indata0 <- indata
temp <- indata0 %>% select(!!subgrp1) %>% arrange(!!subgrp1) %>%
group_by(!!subgrp1) %>%
mutate(numbering =row_number(), max=max(numbering))
view(temp)
f_table <- table(temp$Species)
view(f_table)
}
f1(iris, Species)
Someone is sure to point out that this isn't an RStudio support list,
but your issue is with R, not with RStudio. You created the table in
f1, but you never returned it. The variable f_table is local to the
function. You'd need the following code to do what you want:
f1 <- function(indata , subgrp1){
subgrp1 <- enquo(subgrp1)
indata0 <- indata
temp <- indata0 %>% select(!!subgrp1) %>% arrange(!!subgrp1) %>%
group_by(!!subgrp1) %>%
mutate(numbering =row_number(), max=max(numbering))
view(temp)
f_table <- table(temp$Species)
view(f_table)
f_table
}
f_table <- f1(iris, Species)
It's not so easy to also make temp available. You can do it with
assign(), but I think you'd be better off splitting f1 into two
functions, one to create temp, and one to create f_table.
Duncan Murdoch
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--
Sent from my phone. Please excuse my brevity.
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.
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PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
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