Customer Reviews:
 Enlightening October 1, 2009
Rodrigo Aluizio (Curitiba, PR BR)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Well, there is not a better way to understand any kind of processes than knowing the way it works. That is exactly the point of this book, and it is done in a didactic, uncomplicated way. You can find your own pathways to interact, program and get more and more from R. It will help with functions understanding and customizations, starting from the basic S language to R's specifics characteristics and goals. This book turns R easier than I have expected.
 could have been titled _Understanding_How_R_works_ July 18, 2009
davs2rt (Los Altos Hills, CA United States)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
For the past year or so I have been puttering with R, but never really "got it". This book is just what I've been looking for, to understand what R is "thinking". It isn't a cookbook with loads of examples, but a thorough guide to understanding how R works and how to be productive in it. After only an hour, I understand data.frames, and the environment structure better than several nights of struggling with the online documentation. This isn't really a book about how to analyze data, it's about becoming comfortable and expert in R to make it easy to analyze data. Once you understand the tool, the data analysis becomes much much easier.
I agree with the reviewers who say it's chatty, but that makes it very readable. You don't have to work every example to understand the points the book is making. Likewise, it _is_ cross referenced to death, but it's easy enough to read over the links, and when you're trying to make sense of something, the cross references do take you to the right information to round out a picture.
A legend and pioneer of Graphic statistics June 8, 2009
Yun-chiang Tai (Taipei, TW, ROC)
0 out of 6 found this review helpful
John Chambers, a pioneer and legend for many statistician who is the father of S language and the dream fulfiller for statisticians. The graphic statistics is once a dream for statistician from 1960's. Many statistician once dreamed about to use the high-quality graphics to say something about statistics. the dream get realized by Mr. chambers. The S language is born from the Bell lab which is a great place for the Unix lovers and the once expensive printer users.Now it is transplanted to the Microsoft Windows more than two decades. Mr. Chambers helps statistician fulfill the dream of last century- the graphic statistics and brings the people to the promised land of statistical computing. He is a superstar for statisticians, like Jeff Bezos to the Online book selling. The legend has something to say. So..we..LISTEN.....
The gateway from 'pretty good' to 'expert' September 1, 2008
J. Michaelson
20 out of 20 found this review helpful
This is not an introductory text, and should not be the first R book in your collection. However, if you are a "pretty good" R programmer and want to take the next step in becoming an "expert" R programmer, this is your Bible.
For me, this book fills the hole of understanding how R thinks. To get a complete and accurate view of why R works the way it does, the author supplements the technical discussion with the philosophy of R, as well as pieces of the history of statistical computing and computing in general.
Others might consider this integration of technical detail with philosophical and historical background (complete with Star Trek references) to be "wordy", but this is precisely why I bought the book. If one is interested only in the purely technical aspects, the thorough documentation on the R website is free. I consider the insights - provided by the mind that laid the foundation for R in S - to be well worth the price of the book.
That said, this book is an invaluable guide (both technical and philosophical) on the road to becoming an R expert. I'm looking forward to putting some dog ears on my copy.
 just okay August 13, 2008
C. Tu (Lincoln, Nebraska United States)
12 out of 19 found this review helpful
I bought this book at the 2008 JSM. After I read the first 3 chapters I found that it is too wordy. But I have to agree that this is a good book for understanding the basic mechanism of R. If you are an advanced user you might want to read the S programming which is written by W.N. Venables & B.D Ripley. It is much better than Software for Data Analysis with R.
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