[6260] in s-news-athena
Re: Summary:counting reps of x
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stephen W. Barnett)
Wed Jan 25 17:45:14 1995
From: "Stephen W. Barnett" <sbarnett@marccri.marc.cri.nz>
To: s-news@utstat.toronto.edu
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 10:52:00 GMT+1200
bshipley@courrier.usherb.ca (Bill Shipley) wrote:
> It never occured to me that functions with names like "table" or "rle" would do
> what I wanted. Is this problem with documentation of functions in S-PLUS
> simply due to my lack of experience (stupidity?) or is this a general
> problem.
I think this is a good illustration of why one should just READ the
manual. By reading I mean casual perusal with no specific problem in
mind. You will find yourself saying things like "That looks useful!"
or "Now, that's clever!". In the future, when you do actually have a
problem that requires a function that's hard to find you will recall
having seen it in passing and now where to find more info on it.
This mimmicks the way we learn anything. As children we don't ask our
parents what that thing on 4 wheels is called, we hear them call it a
car and store this information away for future use.
Cheers,
Stephen. W. Barnett
Sun System Administrator
The Horticulture and Food Research Institute of N.Z. Ltd
Private Bag 92169
Auckland
New Zealand
