[6268] in s-news-athena
table and S-Plus documentation
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Shawn Boles)
Thu Jan 26 17:13:16 1995
Date: Thu, 26 Jan 1995 13:58:16 -0800
From: Shawn Boles <shawn@shadowfax.ori.org>
To: s-news@utstat.toronto.edu
In-Reply-To: <199501262008.PAA20392@biostat2.mc.duke.edu>
I agree w/ Frank Harrell. The online help is good and if you want to
know how a function behaves run the example (a trvial task in unix
using emacs in s-mode - a little more trouble in other environments).
Yes, there are a lot of functions in Splus, but that is the tradeoff
for power, ability to customize, and elegance of approach. There ARE
functions that are quite confusing (e.g. postscript...) but help from
other users is readily available via s-news.
I also agree w/ Stephen Barnett that reading the manuals is very helpful
and can reveal possible applications of functions that might not at
first be obvious.
cheers -
Shawn Boles
Senior Research Analyst, *Internet: shawn@ori.org
Oregon Research Institute
Senior Research Associate, Internet: sboles@oregon.uoregon.edu
University of Oregon
City Councilor, Ward 7 Internet: ceexsmb@.eug001.ris.or.gov
City of Eugene
....................... non nova, sed novae .............................
Frank Harrell writes:
> I could not disagree more with Lyle Lofgren's comments about the documentation
> of the table() function. That documentation makes it abundantly clear
> what the function does. As Stephen Barnett stated, reading manuals
> is worthwhile, and it definitely reduces network traffic! If I were
> learning the C language right now, I don't think I would post a message
> asking someone to tell me how to take a square root.
>
> One other note: do help.start() and look up functions under the key words
> "Categorical Data". This points to table().
>
>
