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Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

alyssafrazee.com

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Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#21

Post by minimaxir »

catinsocks wrote: post #12
minimaxir wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RStudio is the best IDE I've ever used and I wish something like that existed for other programming languages. The default workspace is split into the script, data, terminal, and meta (files/charts/help), and selecting a data frame variable will display it in a formatted window, making it very, very easy to debug data issues (I'm attempting to switch from R to Python/pandas due to performance/package issues, and I'm…

Check out Spyder if you are doing Science stuff with python: https://code.google.com/p/spyderlib/

Actually, that looks right up my alley. Thanks!

Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#22

Post by [deleted] »

vcrash wrote: post #7
VLM wrote: post #4

As an intro, its well written and documented. If there is a fail, his sister is a senior in sociology and she "must have" already done significant statistical analysis in class... right? At the very least did some averages using her calculator in high school or something? So there should be substantial opportunity for compare/contrast, assuming his sister is compatible with this learning technique and the author know…

The author of this piece is a woman.

[deleted]

Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#23

Post by dded »

dangoldin wrote: post #5

Nice post. I've recently been trying to get back into R with the goal of being able to replace Excel. For the basic stuff R is great but as you start doing more complicated things it takes quite a while to figure out to do them in R. This is a part of the learning curve.

I really like Excel for adding up columns of numbers. Any task where you want to see the data (and the quantity of data is low enough to realistically be seen) and the operations performed on the data are relatively simple and straight-forward.

But once the operations start getting more involved, I really start disliking Excel (or any spreadsheet). Excel shows the data but hides the formulas. At this point, I very much prefer a script.

Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#24

Post by dded »

danso wrote: post #2

There's not much you can actually teach to someone in an hour, especially about programming. So much of it is dependent on other computer skills...I once taught a class for five hours of introductory programming, and while some people learned things, we were frequently caught up in things like people saving filenames of "folder/hello.rb"...that is, the forward-slash was part of the filename, not the path...which I di…

> that is, the forward-slash was part of the filename, not the path...which I didn't even know was possible on any platform

Nor did I. Which platform?

Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#25

Post by alecdbrooks »

anaphor wrote: post #17
jebus989 wrote: post #15

Per the comments on the article I'd also advise " 1) Google says so: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Rguide.xml 2) It's the accepted convention of the language. When she looks things up of SO, they'll use it; if she looks at a package's source, they'll use it. 3) In RStudio it's "option+hypen" (Mac) to type the four-character " 4) Statistically-speaking, things like x = x + 1 makes no sense 5) You n…

Also, a language shouldn't use the same operator for declaration (initialization in dynamic languages) and assignment imho.

Just to be clear, R doesn't ever use the same operator for both, it uses == for comparison like C and Python. That being said, extra differentiation is a bonus.

Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#26

Post by VLM »

Fomite wrote: post #14
[deleted] wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

Lets try p(female|has authored programming article on a blog called ' http://alyssafrazee.com' with a woman's picture on the side). VLM made a mistake. They were told, rather gently, of their mistake. "My mistake, edited" would have been fine. Instead they doubled down that they were totally right and fine and cool with blazing past ample evidence of the author's gender in pursuit of "Male as Default".

True, I made a minor grammatical mistake, and when information gathering I read the author's work instead of meditating on her reproductive organs, but that is utterly irrelevant to my claim about the article. I still claim I was correct when I identified the article as a well written general audience tutorial although in my personal experience, tutoring works best as an "extreme customization" presentation not "here's something very general from someone who happens to be your sibling". I don't see any particular reward or advantage in distracting from that analysis of the article.

I do disagree with the interpretation, that doubling down, would have been changing the focus of the article analysis yet again, to something even more gender oriented and even less article oriented such as "the most important topic to discuss right now is if vcrash is male or female? Because that's apparently important somehow other than to vcrash's partner?"

flyingbrotus's reply about the RODBC package was awesome because it was on the topic of the discussion and relates directly to the article and busting thru the vertical learning curve of R.

I may very well be an idiot; I'm OK with that.

However, being an idiot would (appear to) have nothing to do with "That's a good article; also, here's another strategy that's worked slightly better". If that specific individual claim about the article were dumb, discussion of my idiocy would be completely on topic.

On the other hand, grammar errors and irrelevant research errors may very well indicate I'm an idiot, but it has nothing to do with the topic. That's why I was pretty cool with it. I'm never going to be hired as a proofreader by anyone not totally desperate and I'm cool with that.

Fomite puts one space after each period. That is wrong, and henceforth we will solely discuss that yawn inducing aspects of that topic. Or maybe not. I'd rather talk about the article, or learning R, or teaching R, or teaching people, or teaching siblings...

Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#27

Post by Fomite »

VLM wrote: post #26
Fomite wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lets try p(female|has authored programming article on a blog called ' http://alyssafrazee.com' with a woman's picture on the side). VLM made a mistake. They were told, rather gently, of their mistake. "My mistake, edited" would have been fine. Instead they doubled down that they were totally right and fine and cool with blazing past ample evidence of the author's gender in pursuit of "Male as Default".

True, I made a minor grammatical mistake, and when information gathering I read the author's work instead of meditating on her reproductive organs, but that is utterly irrelevant to my claim about the article. I still claim I was correct when I identified the article as a well written general audience tutorial although in my personal experience, tutoring works best as an "extreme customization" presentation not "here…

Someone noticed, and gently corrected you. If you had wanted to, a very simple edit would have been the end of it. Instead, you went on some weird tangent about sexism filters and how it's A-OK, and now you're upset that we're on the tangent?

Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#28

Post by VLM »

Fomite wrote: post #27
VLM wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, I made a minor grammatical mistake, and when information gathering I read the author's work instead of meditating on her reproductive organs, but that is utterly irrelevant to my claim about the article. I still claim I was correct when I identified the article as a well written general audience tutorial although in my personal experience, tutoring works best as an "extreme customization" presentation not "here…

Someone noticed, and gently corrected you. If you had wanted to, a very simple edit would have been the end of it. Instead, you went on some weird tangent about sexism filters and how it's A-OK, and now you're upset that we're on the tangent?

OK Fomite, I think we are repeating ourselves, so agreement is highly unlikely although I'm sure civil coexistence is likely.

The author is a heck of a good writer about a topic I like, and also is female, and we can each be interested in one of those topics, its a big internet and we'll all fit in somehow with plenty of space.

Have a pleasant day, and I hope you enjoyed the article.

Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#29

Post by xerula »

jebus989 wrote: post #15

Per the comments on the article I'd also advise " 1) Google says so: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Rguide.xml 2) It's the accepted convention of the language. When she looks things up of SO, they'll use it; if she looks at a package's source, they'll use it. 3) In RStudio it's "option+hypen" (Mac) to type the four-character " 4) Statistically-speaking, things like x = x + 1 makes no sense 5) You n…

Also "=" is compulsory for setting some named function arguments that have a default value. E.g. format(pi, digits Also you can do things like this when you're bored:

((a c) + 1 -> d

(Someone also once told me that "=" for normal assignment sometimes fails in unexpected ways in tryCatch blocks, but I don't know how or why.)

Re: Introducing R to a non-programmer in one hour

#30

Post by Fomite »

thrownaway2424 wrote: post #20

In my experience, non-programmers are the only people who can grok R in the first hour.

My own experience was that I came from statistical languages like SAS, bounced right off R, ended up learning Python and then came back to R and was like "ohhhh…"

It's an odd language, that makes assumptions neither group really hold dear to their heart, but it's also intensely useful.

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