[R] Input appreciated: R teaching idea + a way to improve R-wiki

[John Kane]

--- Ricardo Pietrobon <pietr007 at mc.duke.edu> wrote:

> Bill, very interesting comment.  However, do you
> believe that by posting
> these tutorials on a wiki they could, even if
> initially faulty, be improved
> by the community over time?
> 
> Ricardo
> 
 As a new user to R it strikes me that some of these
examples might be quite useful.  Dr Venables has a
very good point but on the other hand as a
not-very-knowledgeable user I am struck by the idea
tha it might be very useful to see how others attack a
problem. 

 Good as the help examples are, and with a few caveats
they are good, they tend to be very terse and
sometimes a bit to sophisticated for the beginner to
easily grasp.  

> 
> 
> On 10/22/07, Bill.Venables at csiro.au
> <Bill.Venables at csiro.au> wrote:
> >
> > I think you need to see how things work before
> making any decision on
> > this.  While the principle seems OK, in a
> optimistic sort of way, you
> > may be a little disappointed by the outcome.  Some
> will likely be
> > superb, useful, well written and accessible. 
> Others, I suspect, will
> > fall short of this ideal, with some falling a fair
> way short.  That's
> > the way students learn, after all.  They should
> use these exercises to
> > straighten things out in their own minds, and some
> of them seem to have
> > rather twisted ideas, at least initially, even at
> "graduate-level".
> >
> > Some people argue it's useful to see the learning
> process in action, and
> > some books I could mention seem to be written this
> way - but they don't
> > get very good reviews.  I just think there is a
> real danger here of
> > giving misleading and inefficient teaching
> materials a spurious cloak of
> > legitimacy, even if there are disclaimers all over
> it.  I see a need to
> > be very cautious about this, in other words.
> >
> >
> > 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:Bill.Venables at csiro.au
> > http://www.cmis.csiro.au/bill.venables/
> >
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: r-help-bounces at r-project.org
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at r-project.org]
> > On Behalf Of Matthew Keller
> > Sent: Monday, 22 October 2007 9:45 AM
> > To: R list
> > Subject: [R] Input appreciated: R teaching idea +
> a way to improve
> > R-wiki
> >
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I will be teaching a graduate-level course on R at
> CU Boulder next
> > semester. I have a teaching idea that might also
> help improve the R
> > wiki page... I wanted to know what you all thought
> of it and wanted to
> > solicit some advice about doing it.
> >
> > During the latter part of the course, students
> will choose a topic of
> > interest (e.g., hierarchical linear modeling), and
> show how to achieve
> > it in R. They would present their findings to the
> class, and would
> > also be responsible for writing a concise but
> well-written "How To"
> > manual on the topic. These would be ~ 5-10 pages
> and would include
> > basic background of the statistical procedure and
> a commented example
> > with code in R. The goal would be for these to
> read like Baron & Li's
> > "Notes on the use of R for psychology experiments
> and questionnaires."
> >
> > Originally I was going to post these as PDFs on my
> own web-page and
> > let them grow into a compendium of how-to manuals
> as I teach this
> > course over the years. However, perhaps a better
> idea, and one that
> > probably benefits more people, is to have my
> students post their short
> > manuals (not as PDFs but rather typed in) on the
> R-wiki page.
> >
> > Does this seem like a good idea to folks?
> >
> > Another question has to do with how barren the
> current R wiki page
> > is... is it still being actively developed or has
> the community given
> > up on it?
> >
> > Finally, any thoughts on where on the R-wiki site
> we should post our
> > "How To" manuals? The "tips and tricks" section
> seems to barely be
> > more than snippets of conversations from this
> list-serve (often sans
> > the context). My guess is that the "Guides"
> section is where these
> > should go.
> >
> > Your input would be most appreciated. Best,
> >
> > Matt
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Matthew C Keller
> > Asst. Professor of Psychology
> > University of Colorado at Boulder
> > www.matthewckeller.com
> >
> > ______________________________________________
> > R-help at 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 at 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.
> >
> 
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> 
> ______________________________________________
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> reproducible code.
>