. I would love more quality online documentation around the same level as at UCLA (http://www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/; the Stata pages are fantastic), but I think I would like the first draft responsibility to fall to the well qualified instructor (Hi Matt!), and those with at least a Masters in statistics.
I chose to learn Stata in 2002, because the documentation was far superior. R documentation has improved immensely, and now there is a lot more material to get average scientists (like me) comfortable with using R packages and writing R functions. However, R documentation is still too terse with regard to well explained examples, compared to other software. You can find examples, sure, but they may not be so well explained in the function help file. -Dave > I appreciate the input. Off-list, someone suggested that I set up a > class wiki, and have this be the first sieve. I could do some quality > control there first (perhaps sending the link to this list serve at > the end of the semester for others to check over), and then post the > final manuals on the R wiki. I think its a good idea and am mulling > it, but part of me asks: why not just post the (perhaps imperfect) > manuals on the wiki and allow the wiki to do what wikis are supposed > to do? > > I guess I resonated with Ricardo Pietrobon's point: the essence of a > wiki is that it is evolving and self-correcting. Even to get something > started over there would be an improvement. If people wait until they > are 100% certain that everything is 100% accurate, a much diminished > pool of people would post... The accuracy of wikis improves as more > people post. In other words, I think that it is the number of posters, > and not necessarily the signal:noise ratio, that drives wiki > accuracy... > > Matt -- Matthew C Keller Asst. Professor of Psychology University of Colorado at Boulder www.matthewckeller.com -- David C. Airey, Ph.D. Pharmacology Research Assistant Professor Center for Human Genetics Research Member ______________________________________________ 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.