Chris,
Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against learning R at an early age.
However, I feel at a school level, the focus should be a bit more on
programming. Here are some reasons why would not recommend R at school level:
1. At school we seldom deal with lot of data - the focus is more on concepts.
Excel is an excellent tool and no matter how much we love or hate it - we will
be using Excel a lot in our lives.
2. R language is a very high level language. To get a good grasp on programming
- I would recommend any one of QBASIC, C or JAVA (Java might be a bit too much
given OOP is not easy). Learn stuff the hard way - that way your fundamentals
get strong. Even Excel VBA is a very powerful language - if you can incorporate
that in your course - nothing like it. You will be churning out data scientists
from your school.
3. The danger of introducing R too early - similar to introducing calculators
to kids who are learning basic mental maths. They get too dependent on tools
Hope this clears my point of view.
Regards,
Indrajit
________________________________
From: Christopher W. Ryan <cr...@binghamton.edu>
To: R-help <R-help@r-project.org>
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 7:55 PM
Subject: Re: [R] introducing R to high school students
Indrajit, I'm curious: given your preference for hand-drawn graphs for
learners (a very good point), why is Excel "fine" but R not?
[[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.
