Le mercredi 11 novembre 2009 à 10:22 +0100, Uwe Ligges a écrit : > > Peng Yu wrote: > > According to Amazon review, 'Statistical Models in S' is a key > > reference for understanding the methods implemented in several of > > S-PLUS' high-end statistical functions, including 'lm()', predict()', > > 'design()', 'aov()', 'glm()', 'gam()', 'loess()', 'tree()', > > 'burl.tree()', 'nls()' and 'ms()'. > > > > But since it is for S, some part of the book may not be applicable to > > R. Some examples (e.g. interaction.plot()) discussed in this book are > > not available in R. Without, working examples, it is sometimes > > difficult for me to understand the materials in the book. > > > > Besides the functions mentioned in the Amazon review, could somebody > > give me a hint on what chapters (or sections) in this book are not > > appropriate to R? > > > They all are appropriate, but nuances differ these days, as some nuances > differ for recent S-PLUS versions, 17 years later. It should still be > fine to learn some relevant concepts.
You could also note that, at least in the 4th (last) edition of the book, the authors have marked passages with differences between R and S+ with a marginal "R". Now this book has grow a bit out of date since its lst edition (2002 ?) : Newer R packages implements various things previously not implemented in R (e.g. multiple comparisons after ANOVA, previously available in S+ with the "multicomp" function, nd implemented (with a lot more generalizability) in the "multcomp" package). A 5th edition might be in order, but that would be a *daunting* task : The "language" R has grew (e. g. namespaces), the nature and extend of avilable tasks has grew *enormously*, and I don't think that producing a book that would be to 2009 R what V&R4 was to 2002 R is doable by a two-person team, as talented, dedicated and productive as these two persons might be (modulo Oxford sarcasm :-). Furthermore, these two persons already give an enormous amount of time and effort to other R development (search for R-help activity of BV and BDR, or meditate on the recently published stats on R source activity...). Such a document would probably have to be something other than a book to stay up to date and accurate, and even coordinating such a task would need serious time... Even if it would exclude anything present in the vrious packages help files, and should limit to tutorial introductions, examples and discussions, the sheer volume (1700+ packages last time I looked) and the difficulty of coordination (how do you discuss 5 different packages, implementing various means to solve the same problem ?) would involve serious organizational difficulties. So I doubt such a document will get produced in the foreseeable future. Frequent R-help reading and note-taking is the second-best option... To come back to R-vs-S+ topic : unless I'm mistaken, R seems to be currently the dominant version of the S language, and most published S material will nowadays (implicitly) be aimed at R. This should reduce the importance of the problem. Sincerely, Emmanuel Charpentier ______________________________________________ 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.