-roger
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
First, many thanks to Frank Harrell for once again helping me out. This actually relates to the next point, which is my contribution to the 'why don't social scientists use R' discussion. I am a hybrid social scientist(child psychiatrist) who trained on SPSS. Many of my difficulties in coming to terms with R have been to do with trying to apply the logic underlying SPSS, with dire results. You do not want to know how long I spent looking for a 'recode' command in R, to change factor names and classes.....
I think the solution is to combine a graphical interface that encourages command line use (such as Rcommander) with the analyse(this) paradigm suggested, but also explaining how one can a) display the code on a separate window ('page' is only an obvious command once you know it), and b) how one can then save one's modification, make it generally available, and not overwrite the unmodified version (again, thanks, Frank). Finally, one would need to change the emphasis in basic statistical teaching from 'the right test' to 'the right model'. That should get people used to R's logic.
If a rabbit starts to use R, s/he is likely to head for the help files associated with each function, which can assume that the reader can make sense of gnomic utterances like "Omit 'var' to impute all variables, creating new variables in 'search' position 'where'". I still don't know what that one means (as I don't understand search positions, or why they're important). This can be very offputting, and could lead the rabbit to return to familiar SPSS territory.
Finally, friendlier error messages would also help. It took me 3 days, and opening every function I could, to work out that '...cannot find function xxx.data.frame...' meant that MICE was unable to make a polychotomous logistic imputation model converge for the variable immediately preceding it.
I am now off to the help files and FAQs to find out how to change graph parameters, as the plot.mids function in MICE a) doesn't allow one to select a subset of variables, and b) tells me that the graph it wants to produce on the whole of my 26 variable dataset is too big to fit on the (windows) plotting device. Unless anyone wants to tell me how/where? (which of course is why, in the end, R is EASIER to use than SPSS)
______________________________________________ [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide! http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
