Hi again, Typo in the last email. Should read "about 40 standard deviations".
Jim On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 10:54 AM, Jim Lemon <drjimle...@gmail.com> wrote: > Hi Robert, > People want different levels of automation in the software they use. > What concerns many of us is the desire for the function > "figure-out-what-this-data-is-import-it-and-get-rid-of-bad-values". > Such users typically want something that justifies its use by being > written by someone who seems to know what they're doing and lots of > other people use it. One advantage of many R functions is their > modular construction. This encourages users to at least consider the > steps that are taken rather than just accept what comes out of that > long tube. > > Take the contentious problem of outlier identification. If I just let > the black box peel off some values, I don't know what I have lost. On > the other hand, if I import data and examine it with a summary > function, I may find that one woman has a height of 5.2 meters. I can > range check by looking up the Guinness Book of Records. It's an > outlier. I can estimate the probability of such a height. Hmm, about > 4 standard deviations above the mean. It's an outlier. I can attempt a > Sherlock Holmes. "Watson, I conclude that an imperial measure (5'2") > has been recorded as a metric value". It's not an outlier. > > The more R gravitates toward "black box" functions, the more some > users are encouraged to let them do the work.You pays your money and > you takes your chances. > > Jim > > > On Thu, Nov 30, 2017 at 3:37 AM, Robert Wilkins <iwriteco...@gmail.com> wrote: >> R has a very wide audience, clinical research, astronomy, psychology, and >> so on and so on. >> I would consider data analysis work to be three stages: data preparation, >> statistical analysis, and producing the report. >> This regards the process of getting the data ready for analysis and >> reporting, sometimes called "data cleaning" or "data munging" or "data >> wrangling". >> >> So as regards tools for data preparation, speaking to the highly diverse >> audience mentioned, here is my question: >> >> What do you want? >> Or are you already quite happy with the range of tools that is currently >> before you? >> >> [BTW, I posed the same question last week to the r-devel list, and was >> advised that r-help might be a more suitable audience by one of the >> moderators.] >> >> Robert Wilkins >> >> [[alternative HTML version deleted]] >> >> ______________________________________________ >> R-help@r-project.org mailing list -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see >> 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 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE and more, see 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.