[UFO Chicago] follow-up R question, Yale open coursework

[Neil R. Ormos]

Brian Sobolak wrote:

> A few meeting follow-ups....

> 1.  Neil -- Did you have a specific R book in mind
> when you recommended additional R information, or
> were you describing the pattern of charging for
> quality documentation for free software (ala
> ImageMagick)

In the course of making light of the documentation
issue (which certainly affects non-Free software
at least as much as it does Free software), I may
have been guilty of a little hyperbole, which I
wasn't able to rectify because someone changed the
topic.

To set the record straight, I meant to clarify
that there appears to be plenty of high-quality,
free-as-in-beer documentation available for
R. There is a comprehensive (if voluminous) set of
reference documents, along with the excellent
long-form tutorial, "An Introduction to R," by
Venables and Smith (available for free download
but also sold as a paperback).  Plus, about a
zillion shorter tutorials--some directed to a
general audience and others targeted toward
students in particular disciplines.

What seems to be missing from the free-beer
category are items that fill the gap between the
tutorials and the reference documents.  If we had
infinite time, energy, and curiosity, we might
ourselves synthesize the knowledge that fills this
gap by studying the reference manual and doing
lots of experimentation.  But most of us have
deadlines to meet and deliverables to deliver, and
some people even have babies in their
household--hence the need for the commercial books
to provide a head start.

Anyhow, these are the books of which I was
thinking.  They frequently appear on lists of
books recommended for new R users.

  Software for Data Analysis: Programming
  with R (Statistics and Computing)
  John M. Chambers
  ISBN 0387759352

  Introductory Statistics with R
  Peter Dalgaard
  ISBN 0387790535

  The R Book
  Michael J. Crawley
  ISBN 0470510242

  Modern Applied Statistics with S
  William N. Venables and Brian D. Ripley
  ISBN 0387954570

Here are a couple of lists of books for new users
of R.  Each has some brief comments about the
books.

  <http://ecotope.org/blogs/page/R-Book-Review.aspx>

  <http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192369/books-for-learning-the-r-language>

--Neil