On 2/25/10, Patrick Burns <pbu...@pburns.seanet.com> wrote: > * What were your biggest misconceptions or > stumbling blocks to getting up and running > with R? > > * What documents helped you the most in this > initial phase? > > I especially want to hear from people who are > lazy and impatient. > I'm quite resilient so I don't think I got to the point of frustration, but getting up to speed was a lengthy process. The biggest stumbler was getting onto the console, and not knowing what to do next. (My first encounter with stats was SPSS, so it was similar to getting onto a UNIX virtual console after a life-long experience with point-and-click windows: it's not very reassuring to know that there are man pages.) I stayed in the what-do-I-do-next state of mind for about 6-12 months (I learned R myself, and my professors were quite reticent when I first introduced them to R).
Of particular help to making progress were JGR (arguments suggestions, editor with syntax highlighting, object browser, etc.), Rcmdr (quick access to examples for performing specific tasks, etc.) and Sweave + LyX (for easy results transfer and report creation, without the burden of learning LaTeX). For graphics, playwith latticist and rggobi come in very handy. From the documentation, right now I can recall Quick-R and "R for SAS and SPSS users". And of course, RSiteSearch (also via the sos package), Rseek and the vignettes are a must. Regards Liviu ______________________________________________ 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.
