Book for SAS and SPSS and R students

[ajayohri]

Hi List,

I had the pleasure of taking Dr Bob Muenchen's interview for his
upcoming book R For SAS and SPSS users. He has spent 27 years in this
field while I have spent almost that much on earth.

So this is more like a fan blog interview. I thought it would be of
use to people curious about R, or even SAS , or SPSS if they have not
worked on either of these packages before.

Having fought my own battles for cheaper software, or trying to learn
R by kicking the GUI habit,I found this quite useful

It would of extra interest to people in developing world as they
effectively pay 7 times as much due to economic purchasing parity for
softwares, even though statistical decision making is the area they
need the most to optimize their resources and planning.R is free.

So here goes, and thanks for your time, and apologies if you think
this is spam. Please send the comments (especially the SAS-L list )
individually on my email.

Ajay

http://www.decisionstats.com/?p=599

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note-Robert Muenchen (pronounced Min'-chen) is the author of the
famous R for SAS and SPSS users, and his forthcoming book is an
extensive tutorial on anyone wanting to learn either SAS,SPSS ,or R
or even to migrate from one platform to another .In an exclusive
interview to www.decisionstats.com Bob agreed to answer some questions
on the book , and on students planning to enter science careers.



What made you write the R For SAS and SPSS users?

The book-

A few years ago, all my colleagues seemed to be suddenly talking about
R. Had I tried it? What did I think? Wasn't it amazing? I searched
around for a review and found an article by Patrick Burns, "R Relative
to Statistics Packages" which is posted on the UCLA site (http://
www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/technicalreports/). That article pointed out the
many advantages of R and in it Burns claimed that knowing a standard
statistics package interfered with learning R. That article really got
my interest up. Pat's article was a rejoinder to "Strategically using
General Purpose Statistics Packages: A Look at Stata, SAS and SPSS" by
Michael Mitchell, then the manager of statistical consulting at UCLA
(it's at that same site). In it he said little about R, other than he
had "enormous difficulties" learning it that he had especially found
the documentation lacking.

I dove in and started learning R. It was incredibly hard work, most of
which was caused by my expectations of how I thought it ought to work.
I did have a lot to "unlearn" but once I figured a certain step out, I
could see that explaining it to another SAS or SPSS user would be
relatively easy. I started keeping notes on these differences for
myself initially. I finally posted them on the Internet as the first
version of R for SAS and SPSS Users. It was only 80 pages and much of
its explanation was in the form of extensive R program comments. I
provided 27 example programs, each done in SAS, SPSS and R. A person
could see how they differed, topic by topic. When a person ran the
sections of the R programs and read all the comments, he or she would
learn how R worked.

A web page counter on that document showed it was getting about 10,000
hits a month. That translates into about 300 users, paging back and
forth through the document. An editor from Springer emailed me to ask
if I could make it a book. I said it might be 150 pages when I wrote
out the prose to replace all the comments. It turned out to be 480
pages!



http://www.amazon.com/SAS-SPSS-Users-Statistics-Computing/dp/0387094172/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217456813&sr=8-1

You can read the rest of the interview here - www.decisionstats.com
(which is a non commercial non advertising website )

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
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For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
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[Mark A Davenport MADAVENP]

Sorry, here's the right link (I think).

http://www.spss.com/drivers/clientSPSSOA.htm


***************************************************************************************************************************************************************
Mark A. Davenport Ph.D.
Senior Research Analyst
Office of Institutional Research
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
336.256.0395
[hidden email]

'An approximate answer to the right question is worth a good deal more
than an exact answer to an approximate question.' --a paraphrase of J. W.
Tukey (1962)






Ajay ohri <[hidden email]>
Sent by: "SPSSX(r) Discussion" <[hidden email]>
09/27/2008 10:08 AM
Please respond to
Ajay ohri <[hidden email]>


To
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cc

Subject
Book for SAS and SPSS and R students






Hi List,

I had the pleasure of taking Dr Bob Muenchen's interview for his
upcoming book R For SAS and SPSS users. He has spent 27 years in this
field while I have spent almost that much on earth.

So this is more like a fan blog interview. I thought it would be of
use to people curious about R, or even SAS , or SPSS if they have not
worked on either of these packages before.

Having fought my own battles for cheaper software, or trying to learn
R by kicking the GUI habit,I found this quite useful

It would of extra interest to people in developing world as they
effectively pay 7 times as much due to economic purchasing parity for
softwares, even though statistical decision making is the area they
need the most to optimize their resources and planning.R is free.

So here goes, and thanks for your time, and apologies if you think
this is spam. Please send the comments (especially the SAS-L list )
individually on my email.

Ajay

http://www.decisionstats.com/?p=599

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Note-Robert Muenchen (pronounced Min'-chen) is the author of the
famous R for SAS and SPSS users, and his forthcoming book is an
extensive tutorial on anyone wanting to learn either SAS,SPSS ,or R
or even to migrate from one platform to another .In an exclusive
interview to www.decisionstats.com Bob agreed to answer some questions
on the book , and on students planning to enter science careers.



What made you write the R For SAS and SPSS users?

The book-

A few years ago, all my colleagues seemed to be suddenly talking about
R. Had I tried it? What did I think? Wasn't it amazing? I searched
around for a review and found an article by Patrick Burns, "R Relative
to Statistics Packages" which is posted on the UCLA site (http://
www.ats.ucla.edu/stat/technicalreports/). That article pointed out the
many advantages of R and in it Burns claimed that knowing a standard
statistics package interfered with learning R. That article really got
my interest up. Pat's article was a rejoinder to "Strategically using
General Purpose Statistics Packages: A Look at Stata, SAS and SPSS" by
Michael Mitchell, then the manager of statistical consulting at UCLA
(it's at that same site). In it he said little about R, other than he
had "enormous difficulties" learning it that he had especially found
the documentation lacking.

I dove in and started learning R. It was incredibly hard work, most of
which was caused by my expectations of how I thought it ought to work.
I did have a lot to "unlearn" but once I figured a certain step out, I
could see that explaining it to another SAS or SPSS user would be
relatively easy. I started keeping notes on these differences for
myself initially. I finally posted them on the Internet as the first
version of R for SAS and SPSS Users. It was only 80 pages and much of
its explanation was in the form of extensive R program comments. I
provided 27 example programs, each done in SAS, SPSS and R. A person
could see how they differed, topic by topic. When a person ran the
sections of the R programs and read all the comments, he or she would
learn how R worked.

A web page counter on that document showed it was getting about 10,000
hits a month. That translates into about 300 users, paging back and
forth through the document. An editor from Springer emailed me to ask
if I could make it a book. I said it might be 150 pages when I wrote
out the prose to replace all the comments. It turned out to be 480
pages!



http://www.amazon.com/SAS-SPSS-Users-Statistics-Computing/dp/0387094172/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1217456813&sr=8-1


You can read the rest of the interview here - www.decisionstats.com
(which is a non commercial non advertising website )

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD