Hi Chris, I am not sure, whether introducing R to High School students would be a good idea as I feel we should encourage students to sketch the graphs in paper to get their concepts right. Excel is fine, but - if I write an equation on the board, will the student be able to visualize its graph? Allowing students to use software to plot graphs at a very early age may hinder that learning. What I would focus on (as the teacher pointed out - that they may not be able to write code) - is being able to write simple codes to get a grasp on programming (they can use QBASIC which is one of the simplest programming softwares). R to my mind should be introduced at an undergraduate level - where they are able to use its real power (vectors, matrices, graphics etc.). Thats my view :) Regards, Indrajit
________________________________ From: Christopher W Ryan <cr...@binghamton.edu> To: R-help <R-help@r-project.org> Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 8:16 AM Subject: [R] introducing R to high school students I participate peripherally on a listserve for middle- and high-school science teachers. Sometimes questions about graphing or data analysis come up. I never miss an opportunity to advocate for R. However, the teachers are often skeptical that their students would be able to issue commands or write a little code; they think it would be too difficult. Perhaps this stems from the Microsoft- and spreadsheet-centered, pointy-clicky culture prevalent in most US public schools. Then again, I have little experience teaching this age group, besides my own kids and my Science Olympiad team, so I respect their concerns and expertise. I don't know yet what software they generally use, but I suspect MS Excel and SPSS. Now I have to put my money where my mouth is. I've offered to visit a high school and introduce R to some fairly advanced students participating in a longitudinal 3-year science research class. I anticipate keeping things very simple: --objects and the fact that there is stuff inside them. str(), head(), tail() --how to get data into R --dataframes, as I imagine they will mostly be using single, "rectangular" datasets --a lot of graphics (I can't imagine that plot(force, acceleration) is beyond a high-schooler's capability.) --simple descriptive statistics --maybe t-tests, chi-square tests, and simple linear regression. Alas, probably more than we would have time to cover. Has anyone done anything with R in high schools? Thanks. --Chris Ryan SUNY Upstate Medical University Binghamton Clinical Campus ______________________________________________ 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. [[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.
