[R] Reasons to Use R in a Public Administrations and Ideas for a Short Training

[Christopher W Ryan]

A few years ago I gave two 5-hour workshops about R to a class of US high
school students in a somewhat-accelerated science research class (so these
were already science-motivated kids).  They had been using mainly Excel,
and some SPSS for which the school had a license.  Overall they seemed to
like the sessions. They started a computer programming club afterward, and
some continued to use R.

As for motivation, I found it helpful with the kids to contrast the
instructions for making a scatterplot in Excel, with the command in R.  You
can find many long documents on the internet describing how to do it in
Excel. Find a long one (I've seen 17 pages) filled with screenshots and
many numbered steps ("click here, then click there, then click over here .
. . ")  Then contrast it with something like plot(force, acceleration) or
plot(x,y)   It becomes pretty clear which is easier (postponing, for the
moment, the question of where x and y came from)

Showing cool graphs that could never be made in Excel is also helpful.

Lastly, in the international setting you describe, I would emphasize the
portability of code. Ask them how, with Excel, they would share their
analysis steps with colleagues in another country, for application to the
colleagues' data.

--Chris Ryan
Broome County Health Department
Binghamton, NY US

On Wed, Apr 18, 2018 at 9:47 AM, Lorenzo Isella <lorenzo.isella using gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear All,
> Ages ago I posted to this mailing list asking for advice about to
> evangelize the use of R in an international public
> administration where the fact that R is free is not a decisive factor
> (actually its being "freeware" may even be seen negatively). After a
> long time, I think it is worthwhile asking the question again and see
> what suggestions other users have.
>
> Another question related to that: let's say you have the possibility
> to give a short course (most likely short of 10 hours) to people
> who are not trained in statistics (people with a background in
> international relations or political scientists frustrated at Excel
> and who sometimes have to do a number of repetitive tasks). How would
> you formulate a short training to make them not R proficient users,
> but aware and looking forward to learning more about R?
> Any suggestion and/or pointer to online resources is appreciated.
> Many thanks
>
> Lorenzo
>
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