Getting Started with R: what readers and course participants say
From the review of the book in Trends in Ecology and Evolution, by Graeme D. Ruxton, University of St Andrews:
- “The book would make the ideal text for a short course on data management and presentation — it truly packs an amazing amount of wisdom and wit between slim covers.”
- “This command-line interface is part of what makes R wonderful, but also what can make it intimidating to get started on. Blowing away any feeling of intimidation is what this book is about.”
- “A final strength of this book is that it does not try to do too much; its aim is to get you comfortable with R, not to teach you new statistical methodologies.”
Vi Nguyen (Graduate Student):
I’ve honestly got to say that it has been extremely helpful in my reacquaintance with R! I found the conversational and colloquial tone of the manuscript very effective in getting points across to the inexperienced R user (i.e. me). In the past, referring to other R textbooks has left me feeling even more bewildered and confused than I originally was, as they all seem to assume that the inexperienced reader already knows everything there is to know about R, whereas your manuscript explains everything simply from the start.
The explanations of why certain commands and steps were done in R were a novel touch — I don’t remember any other R textbook explaining why they’d done certain things.
I felt like I had constant help and guidance throughout the whole book, rather than being left alone to figure things out.
Three anonymous reviewers:
- “I agree absolutely with the authors’ claim that most people want to learn R, and are put off by the steepness of the learning curve. A book that could help people up that curve would be very popular.”
- “The book is timely and relevant to a large number of courses being taught.”
- “The way that the book is set up is good from the perspective of the things you are probably going to be doing in R… R is very task-oriented.”
Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal (20–22 April 2009):
- “I thought the course was excellent and wish I’d started using R five years ago. Thank you!”
- “Very, very helpful. Saved me about a year of my PhD!”
Andy Hector, Zurich University:
A brilliant demonstration of what multivariate methods are good for and how to implement them in R.
Durham Anthropology and Biology (10–12 March 2008):
This is the best course I’ve been on in the last five years.
Marco Batalha, Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil (12th Nov 2008):
Foi uma grande oportunidade para alunos e professores poderem assistir a esse curso no Brasil. Sua filosofia permite que alguém aprenda o R de maneira intuitiva e perceba as suas muitas poderosas ferramentas. O curso permite que alguém tenha uma transição suave de programas estatísticos orientados por menus para o R.