[plt-scheme] Scheme and R

On Mar 26, 2009, at 9:17 AM, Prabhakar Ragde wrote:

> R is a free, open-source language for statistical computing that is  
> gaining in popularity (to the extent that the New York Times has  
> written about it). The required stats course that our students take  
> has apparently been using it for a while.
>
> One of the inspirations for R was Scheme. R is not purely  
> functional, but has lexical scoping, closures, and many built-in  
> higher-order functions.
>
> I'm wondering if anyone on this list has experience with teaching R  
> or with making explicit the connections between R and Scheme. I'd  
> like to take more notice of this in our first-year CS classes, and  
> help prepare students for the use of R in their second-year stats  
> class. --PR

I have at least two connections with R, though I've never used it:

1) I wound up in a conversation with a guy in an airport who caught me  
reading a linear algebra textbook; the upshot of our conversation was  
that he used R, and wanted to know what I thought of it.

2) I'm teaching a computational finance seminar, and one closely  
related course (a.k.a. he's given me permission to draw upon his web  
page) is Steven Skiena's, at Stony Brook; apparently he suggests the  
use of R.

John



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