Teachable Fortunes - gregorp/statr GitHub Wiki

fortune(18) Thomas W. Blackwell: I just discovered to my surprise that I cannot define a function with an argument named ‘break’ or ‘while’! Brian D. Ripley: No, they are reserved names. [...] Most programming languages have reserved words, so I am surprised you are surprised. —Thomas W. Blackwell and Brian D. Ripley R-help (November 2003)

fortune(32) I have mentioned several times on this list that I’m in the process of developing a new and wonderful implementation of lme and I would prefer to continue working on that rather than modifying old-style code. —Douglas Bates R-help (March 2004)

fortune(49) If you give people a linear model function you give them something dangerous. —John Fox useR! 2004, Vienna (May 2004)

fortune(77) Firstly, don’t call your matrix ‘matrix’. Would you call your dog ‘dog’? Anyway, it might clash with the function ‘matrix’. —Barry Rowlingson R-help (October 2004)

fortune(105) A sufficiently trained statistician can read the vagaries of a Q-Q plot like a shaman can read a chicken’s entrails, with a similar recourse to scientific principles. Interpreting Q-Q plots is more a visceral than an intellectual exercise. The uninitiated are often mystified by the process. Experi- ence is the key here. —Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Murdoch University StatsNotes

fortune(158) My solution when I run into mysteries like this is to put ‘browser()’ in the function just before or after the line of interest. The magnitude and direction of my stupidity usually become clear quickly. —Patrick Burns R-help (February 2006)

fortune(165) Yourexamplesmightactuallybereadableifyouusedyourspacebar. —Brian D. Ripley (answering a question containing code without any spaces) R-help (May 2006)

fortune(168) When talking about user friendliness of computer software I like the analogy of cars vs. busses: [. . . ] Using this analogy programs like SPSS are busses, easy to use for the standard things, but very frustrating if you want to do something that is not already preprogrammed. R is a 4-wheel drive SUV (though environmentally friendly) with a bike on the back, a kayak on top, good walking and running shoes in the passenger seat, and mountain climbing and spelunking gear in the back. R can take you anywhere you want to go if you take time to learn how to use the equipment, but that is going to take longer than learning where the bus stops are in SPSS. —Greg Snow R-help (May 2006)

fortune(170) Statistical computing is not easy, so how could R be? Who has ever claimed it is? Any package that makes statistical computing appear to be easy is probably giving you wrong answers half the time, or is extremely limited in scope. —Duncan Murdoch (in a discussion about the usability of R) R-help (May 2006)

fortune(173) Warning: Although abusing R was not proved to be addictive, it should be noted that it often leads to harder stuff. —Ivan Mizera (self-confessed abuseR) useR! 2006, Vienna (June 2006)

fortune(206) Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Leo Tolstoy

and every messy data is messy in its own way - it's easy to define the characteristics of a clean dataset (rows are observations, columns are variables, columns contain values of consistent types). If you start to look at real life data you'll see every way you can imagine data being messy (and many that you can't)! -- Hadley Wickham (answering 'in what way messy data sets are messy') R-help (January 2008)

fortune(241) If I were to be treated by a cure created by stepwise regression, I would prefer voodoo. -- Dieter Menne (in a thread about regressions with many variables) R-help (October 2009)

fortune(251) Finally, a word of wisdom from a long-ago engineering colleague: "Whenever I see an outlier, I'm never sure whether to throw it away or patent it." -- Berton Gunter (on outlier identification) R-help (December 2009)

fortune(267) On average, any data manipulation that can be described in a sentence or two of English can be programmed in one line in R. If you find yourself writing a long 'for' loop to do something that sounds simple, take a step back and research if an existing combination of functions can easily handle your request. -- Erik Iverson R-help (June 2010)

fortune(312) The problem here is that the $ notation is a magical shortcut and like any other magic if used incorrectly is likely to do the programmatic equivalent of turning yourself into a toad. -- Greg Snow (in response to a user that wanted to access a column whose name is stored in y via x$y rather than xy) R-help (February 2012)

fortune(350) You need to get the hang of reading the online help. The information required is actually there in ?dotchart --- it's just tersely and obscurely expressed. A certain degree of optimism is required. You need to believe that the information is there; then ask yourself "What could they possibly mean by what they have written that would tell me what I need to know?". -- Rolf Turner (on reading the help pages) R-help (June 2013)