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Wickham et al's R packages are great, especially dplyr, and I think should be taught to new R users pretty much right off the bat. I find R's syntax to be a big
by andy_wrote 12y ago
Wickham et al's R packages are great, especially dplyr, and I think should be taught to new R users pretty much right off the bat. I find R's syntax to be a big hangup for new learners, especially on indexing and apply-to-each (sapply, mapply, just plain apply...), but dplyr really makes life much easier.
The %>% operator alone (which to be fair was originally from magrittr) is a great help. Not sure if this is my personal biases, but I always find it easier to read calls chained postfix-style.
- craigching 12y agoI'm actually reviewing a book due out this summer called "Data Computing" that introduces the "Hadley stack" as the way of getting started in data analysis and statistics. It's by a professor here in Minneapolis at Macalester College. I agree with you about dplyr + ggplot and was pretty much gobsmacked at the obviousness of "this is the way it should be taught" and am glad I'm in the position to help review such a text! I wonder if eventually this is the future of standard R.
- hudibras 12y agoThe book sounds great; can you give any more details?