On 2/11/08, Paul Gilbert <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Stas Kolenikov wrote: > > ... > > Training researchers of tomorrow might be great, but ifyour students get > on > > the market in the end of the semester, they won't have the luxury of > waiting > > until R becomes THE package of choice. > > > Not being a teacher, I usually follow these discussions with a bit of > amusement and some befuddlement. We hire young people hoping they will > bring in bright new ideas from academia, and academics are training the > students based on what they think are the old things we use. > Fortunately, R is already one of the packages of choice many places. > > Another point that needs more emphasis is that R is actually a > programming language, like Matlab and and APL, so it really has more > general usefulness than "statistics packages" that one might use in the > narrower context of a statistics course. >
There are people who would be developing and pricing some novel financial derivatives -- your "young people" are probably Ph.D. in finance or statistics or economics, and yes, programming is a must at research level, and R is a great choice (although economists might say that GAUSS or Stata is an even greater choice). The original question was about the first and most likely the only statistics class the health students will ever take, and the words "graduate level" should not be fooling anybody -- that will have to be a non-calculus data analysis class (Arin Basu can surprise me here now if it is different!!!). I would predict the students coming out of it will run the routine analysis that are spelled out by FDA and the likes, and I would think the FDA regulations could go as far as specific SAS syntax, or at least to specify SAS PROCs to be used. The GPL software does not necessarily thrive in commercial and even academic environments -- I have plenty acquantainces of mine in academia who prefer to use some commercial flavors of LaTeX over the free miktex distribution for the illusion of technical support they get for their money; I expect those people to prefer SPSS or SAS over R for similar reasons (plus the GUI). I don't argue that R is a greal tool for innovative work, but rather that it is the best tool for the basic stats class to a not-so-technical audience, and in the perspective work the students would be doing. Of course if you are a full professor you can dismiss any of the comments and teach the way you like. That's what I'll be planning to do when I get there :)) -- Stas Kolenikov, also found at http://stas.kolenikov.name Small print: Please do not reply to my Gmail address as I don't check it regularly. [[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.
