[R] Re: R online manuals

[Martin Maechler]

[diverted from R-devel to R-help, since hopefully of much wider interest]

>>>>> "PD" == Peter Dalgaard <p.dalgaard at biostat.ku.dk>
>>>>>     on 25 Aug 2004 17:17:55 +0200 writes:

    PD> trindade at stat.ufl.edu writes:
    >> There is a mistake on the "Weibull Distribution" (base
    >> package) help page in the online docs
    >> (http://docs.stat.ufl.edu/R/doc/html/). The formula for
    >> Var(X) should have Gamma(1 + 1/a)^2 in place of Gamma(1 +
    >> 1/a).

    PD> Looks like docs.stat.ufl.edu haven't been updated for a
    PD> while. It still has the old organisation of the base
    PD> packages. We can't fix bugs retrospectively,
    PD> y'know... The 1.9.1 version does have the squared term
    PD> (it has gamma instead of Gamma, though).

Just as note to everyone listening:

There are much more official ``R online manuals''
than the one you mention:

1)
  The most official ones, available by [Manuals] just off the R home page,
  which goes to CRAN http://cran.r-project.org/manuals.html
  but these are PDFs which---for the reference
  manual of all help pages---may be a bit frightening with its
  almost 2300 pages.
  
  Though, actually using acroread's [Find] , entering "Weibull"
  very quickly brings you to page 1141, and on p.1142 you see
  the formulae as nice mathematical equations.

  If you like these real formulae rather than their plain (or
  Html) text equivalents, I'd like to draw your attention to the
  much underused
       help(dweibull, offline = TRUE)
  which produces a nice postscript help file for the weibull
  distribution --- if LateX has been properly available when
  your R was built / installed.

2) The less official ones, particularly for "R-developers" are
   the help pages for current "R-patched" and "R-devel",
   available by  [Help Pages]  off the R home page,  which leads
   you to  http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/
   and there, you'll find (all the manuals, not just) the help pages
   in the usual ``help.start()'' like form, e.g.,
   http://stat.ethz.ch/R-manual/R-patched/library/stats/html/Weibull.html

Martin Maechler