Possibly. I find it difficult to argue the case either way in the abstract, though. I think once you see some of the outcomes, it will become clear which are good enough for posting and which are not. Bill Venables. _____
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ricardo Pietrobon Sent: Monday, 22 October 2007 2:56 PM To: Venables, Bill (CMIS, Cleveland) Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [R] Input appreciated: R teaching idea + a way to improve R-wiki 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 On 10/22/07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 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:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.cmis.csiro.au/bill.venables/ -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] ] 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@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@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. [[alternative HTML version deleted]] ______________________________________________ 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.
