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africanmathsinitiative / R-Instat-Help

The latest uncompiled (.hnd) and compiled (.cmd) versions of the help file for the statistics software package R-Instat
https://chuffed.org/project/africandatainitiative
GNU General Public License v3.0
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What's special about R-Instat? #24

Open rdstern opened 5 years ago

rdstern commented 5 years ago

This is another category in the help file. I try a first answer here and please assist. Then I'll transfer it to the help file.

  1. R-Instat is free, and always will be.
  2. R-Instat uses R and R is really special. The R statistical system provides free and open-source high-quality statistical software. It has correctly become extremely popular. Many articles explain why, for example here. A measure of R's popularity has been the number of contributed packages and CRAN has more than 13,000.
  3. However, using R requires coding and programming skills. R-Instat dialogs allow you to generate and run R code without having to know the language. R-Instat dialogs have a consistent design, making them easy to learn and use. They also protect you from some of the quirks and inconsistencies in R itself.
  4. Using R itself means you have to decide between the many packages and that can be a difficult task. R-Instat has made this choice for you and selected over 100 of the best R packages. In particular, R-Instat implements many features from the excellent tidyverse packages.
  5. Many analyses involved multiple data frames. This is easy and logical in R-Instat through the specially constructed Data Book.
  6. There is a powerful calculation "system" in R-Instat, using the excellent dplyr package, making many transformations of data into a straightforward process. That is just one part of the powerful Prepare menu in R-Instat. This menu makes it easy to undertake many complex operations, for example merging data from different data frames.
  7. We also have an easy-to-use system for filtering the data. So subsets can be analysed.
  8. The graphics in R-Instat are exciting, through our decision to make use of the very powerful ggplot2 system of graphics.
  9. If you need to extend the use of an R command slightly over what is in a dialog, then the script file can be used to "tweak" the corresponding R command.
  10. The log file keeps a record of all the R commands used in an R-Instat session which can be saved. If you need to extend an analysis further you can start in R-Instat, then transfer the log file and continue your work in RStudio.
  11. The tailored menus in R-Instat enable analyses in particular subject areas to be undertaken easily. Currently they are for Climatic analyses, Public Procurement, Options by Context (for agricultural trials) and Health/Survival (coming soon).

Please improve and add.

dannyparsons commented 5 years ago

This looks good. I have slightly modified the first few points. I still think it is a bit R heavy and probably needs some more general points. Although its good to give mention to R, I'm thinking that some of these points might be a bit meaningless without knowing anything about R and could scare people off by sounding overly technical.

R-Instat being developed in Africa is another reason its special?