I was using softwares statistics with user-friendly GUI in my undergraduate classroom. Now I am changing to R. My intention is in next semester (in Brazil begins in august) use R with RCommander for beginner class. In advanced class I will teaching data analysis with Rgui ou RStudio. Students has terror of R because no there is user-friendly interface.
Nowadays I consider R the best statistical software for Political Science. The learning curve it's bigger than other programs, but the gains are much better.
Other good program is Gretl. A little limited yet, but promissor.
Journal of Statistical Software: Special Volume Political Methodology
http://www.jstatsoft.org/v42/i01/paper
Ricardo Borges Gama Neto
Department of Political Science
Pernambuco Federal University
Brazil
http:www.ufpe.br/dcp
Em 08/06/2012, ās 14:14, Richman, Jesse T. escreveu:
> I've been teaching undergraduate quantitative methods with the SPSS software but am considering moving to R. Thank you for starting this thread!
>
> I asked CQ press about their plans to add a Pollack companion workbook that uses R (currently they have SPSS and STATA books). According to a CQ press representative, "we have the proposal in for an R companion book now and if all goes well, we hope to publish it sometime next year (I would guess later in the year)."
>
> Jesse
>
> ___________
> Jesse Richman
> Department of Political Science and Geography
> Old Dominion University
> ________________________________________
> From: Political Methodology Society [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Bear F. Braumoeller [[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2012 7:16 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [POLMETH] Undergrad Stats Texts using R
>
> Terrific topic.
>
> I have had considerable success teaching undergraduate statistics in R, with Verzani's "Using R for Introductory Statistics" and Gonick and Smith's "Cartoon Guide to Statistics" (credit to Wendy Tam Cho for introducing me to it... and overcoming my initial reluctance to teach from a book with cartoons.) My reasoning for this arrangement was straightforward:
>
> - The cost of R relative to other statistics packages would be quite appealing
> - Using R would ensure that they hate the software more than the instructor
> - Selecting a cartoon-based textbook would ensure that no one could complain about the difficulty of the course
>
> All three predictions have been borne out.
>
> Verzani struck me as more accessible than its competitors when I chose it, and I haven't had any major complaints about using it. In looking around at more recent R textbooks, though, I see quite a few that seem to be potentially very useful, so I'll look forward to hearing of others' experience with them.
>
> B.
>
> Bear F. Braumoeller
> Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies
> Department of Political Science
> The Ohio State University
> http://www.polisci.osu.edu/faculty/braumoeller/index.htm
>
> On Jun 5, 2012, at 2:55 PM, Bowers, Jake wrote:
>
>> Hi All,
>>
>> I am starting a new thread here on the topic of stats texts for undergrads to follow the great discussion about combined design and stats books that Paul kicked off. We teach a sophomore level statistics class here and have not yet added a dedicated design course for all of our students (the honors students get their own design class in the context of their thesis work).
>>
>> I have had some success with an undergraduate intro stats class which closely follows Danny Kaplan's very cool and unorthodox book ( http://www.macalester.edu/~kaplan/ism/ ). We use RStudio Server (so the students do not run R on their own laptops nor do they ever download files but rather use constructions like load(url("http://thedata.rda")) ). And I never lecture, but instead make each class into 55 minutes of intensive hands-on work where the TA and I wander the room helping the students grapple with the in-class handouts. We do not use a GUI but expect the students to learn R as they read the book and complete the in-class assignments. I add my own module on the central limit theorem and skip his vector geometric coverage of orthogonal projection and logistic regression. The keys to this course being popular are (1) the book, (2) no lectures, and (3) no local installs of R (thanks to RStudio Server and the RStudio crew).
>>
>> We are a strong engineering and computer science school, so, we do have some students who have had some past programming skills, but we also have the expected mix of quantitative inclinations for a political science department in a large state school.
>>
>> If anyone else has had good luck (or useful warnings) about their past experience teaching undergraduate political science majors about statistics, I'd love to hear it.
>>
>> Best,
>>
>> Jake
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Jake Bowers
>> Assistant Professor, Dept of Political Science
>> Assistant Professor, Dept of Statistics
>> Research Scientist, National Center for Supercomputer Applications
>> University of Illinois @ Urbana-Champaign
>> http://jakebowers.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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