[6300] in s-news-athena
Comments by Thurman Wenz
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Prof. Brian Ripley)
Sun Jan 29 08:40:33 1995
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 95 13:21:47 GMT
From: ripley@stats.ox.ac.uk (Prof. Brian Ripley)
To: s-news@utstat.toronto.edu
Cc: tyw1@nioshe2.em.cdc.gov
> -- [ From: Thurman Wenzl * EMC.Ver #2.10P ] --
....
> I hope someone starts writing the more complete examples I'm looking
> for; Venable in the new Springer book seems aimed only at those who are
> already deeply conversant in the language.
I presume the reference is to Venables & Ripley, `Modern Applied
Statistics with S-Plus'. From its back cover
`The aim of this book is to show how to use S-Plus as a powerful and
graphical system. Readers are assumed to have a basic grounding in
statistics, and so the book is intended for would-be users of S-Plus,
and both students and researchers using statistics.'
I don't mind comments on and even criticisms of our book, but I do
object to comments from people who appear not to have read
even the cover (and not even the 20+ point type on it)!
It has always seemed to me that S-Plus users would profit from much more
documentation. But commentators seem to seriously underestimate the
effort required, and over-estimate the reward (which is to have
one's contribution overlooked, it seems). Since it is only a few weeks
since my spatial software was attributed to someone else, perhaps I
could be excused for asking for a little more consideration.
I have tried several times to encourage both authors and publishers
to produce a book at a lower level than ours, but so far as I know
only Everitt's has appeared. (I am taking Spector's to be about S
rather than statistical applications, as its title (and to me its
contents) suggest.) Lest the prospect of ignorant comments put
would-be authors off, I should say that Bill Venables and I have
also some feedback which does make the effort seem worthwhile.
Brian Ripley
