A Survivor's Guide to R: An Introduction for the Uninitiated and the Unnerved - Softcover

Gaubatz, Kurt Taylor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1483346730 ISBN 13: 9781483346731

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2014

Synopsis

Focusing on developing practical R skills rather than teaching pure statistics, Dr. Kurt Taylor Gaubatz’s A Survivor’s Guide to R provides a gentle yet thorough introduction to R. The book is structured around critical R tasks, and focuses on applied knowledge, rather than abstract concepts. Gaubatz’s easy-to-read approach helps students with little or no background in statistics or programming to develop real-world R skills through straightforward coverage of R objects and functions. Focusing on real-world data, the challenges of dataset construction, and the use of R’s powerful graphing tools, the guide is written in an accessible, sympathetic, even humorous style that ensures students acquire functional R skills they can use in their own projects and carry into their work beyond the classroom.

About this title

About the Author

Kurt Taylor Gaubatz, PhD, is an associate professor in the Graduate Program in International Studies at Old Dominion University. In addition to courses in international relations and international law, he regularly teaches research methods and advanced statistics. He has previously taught methodology and formal modeling as a faculty member at Stanford University and at Oxford University (Nuffield College), where he was the visiting John G. Winant Lecturer in American Foreign Policy. He has also served as the Susan Luise Dyer Peace Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and received a Pew Faculty Fellowship from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Professor Gaubatz’s most recent book is A Survivor’s Guide to R (SAGE 2015), which is a broad and cross-disciplinary introduction to the R language for statistical programming. He is also the author of Elections and War (Stanford University Press, 1999), which is a study of the electoral politics of military conflict. His work on international law and on the relationship between domestic politics and international relations has appeared in a number of leading journals. His work on political modeling has received funding from the US Department of Defense.

Professor Gaubatz earned an AB in economics from U.C. Berkeley, an MALD in international law from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, an MDiv in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a PhD in political science from Stanford University. More information can be found at kktg.net/kurt.

 

Review

"The guide is detailed enough that students could practice these operations outside the classroom until they mastered them, which means that more class time can be spent discussing the conceptual issues in statistics." -- Ole J. Forsberg, Oklahoma State University

"R′s visualization tools and its powerful graphics capabilities . . . make this book a popular choice for many applications." -- Charlotte Tate, San Francisco State University

"A strength is the author′s thorough approach to the code without being . . . dull.  I very much appreciate that the author describes R code idiosyncrasies while keeping the text light." -- Yulan Liang, University of Maryland, Baltimore

"[This book] does an excellent job of guiding readers through pitfalls common to R′s data handling idiosyncrasies―pitfalls usually learned after hours of frustration and lamentation. The conversational, and at times humorous, style makes for a readable, enjoyable, and relaxed examination of a powerful computation tool with a steep learning curve. Each chapter is compartmentalized enough to be read separately, but the author includes chapter references . . . to tie the guide together as a whole . . . The author covers the full spectrum, plus, thankfully, quite a bit of  material not usually included in other R introductions . . . The author covers the material in depth with nicely done examples.  I was also very happy to see that the author included a section on programming etiquette in R―very nice." -- A. Dean Monroe, Angelo State University

"I very much appreciate the development of a text primarily devoted to the students and practitioners who are first-time users of R . . . It is a very gentle and easy-to-read introduction to R for anyone who might have been afraid of learning programming language . . . It [is] very easy to read and follow . . . The flow of the topics is logical and natural for teaching any computational language. With a good sense of humor, the text is highly user-friendly." -- Professor David Han, University of Texas, San Antonio

Edition details

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1483346730
• ISBN 13: 9781483346731
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 488