Acornell.2769
net.general
utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!eaf
Fri Apr 16 11:14:29 1982
List or newsgroup of S users - data analysis
To:      Users of S (a package for statistics and data analysis and graphics)
Subject: Proposal for S Discussion Group
From:    Edward A. Fox, Dept. of Computer Science, Cornell Univ.
         (decvax!vax135!cornell!eaf)

   Recently, there have been several messages about the S package for
interactive data analysis which was developed by Richard A. Becker and
John M. Chambers at BTL and is available from there for around $150.
The book "Computational Methods for Data Analysis", by John Chambers, Wiley,
1977 explains some of the background thinking; the package has much the
same flavor of UNIX in that it has a simple but elegant basic structure and
a multitude of functions to choose from and string together.
   
   As far a I know, there is no "users group" of S fans.  I would expect
that there are a number of folks with sets of macros or functions that do 
many of the things I'd like to, and it would make sense to not have to 
re-invent them.  I realize there are nice macros like ?Cp and ?adjust, and 
it is easy to write others, but hope someone has things like:
      the ability to get regressions with sequentials as well as partials,
        and matching analysis of variance, based on convenient input such as
        for the 'fit' option of glim (without using glim), or SAS model stmts.
      ANOVA for general means model (besides 'twoway' for effects model)
      estimate and contrast of regression coefficients as in SAS
      device drivers for Spinwriter ("graphics" mode), BBN BitGraph

It would be nice to have a listing of convenient routines people have 
developed, or at least a list of current S users.  If there is sufficient
interest, a newsgroup (perhaps net.lang.S) could be set up.  Unfortunately,
I don't have the time to do that, since I'll be leaving the country by
summer time and have lots to finish up.  Any volunteers?

   A newsgroup might be of help, since it takes a while to become familiar 
with ALL of the capabilities of S, even though initial use is easy.

   Now, a quote from someone else on this matter:
"Given this state of affairs, one of the ideas for fostering inter-user
communication might be to use usenet, the network of Unix machines that
distribute news to one-another.  Cornell is on usenet, as well as many
Bell Labs sites, and probably a reasonable fraction of other S sites, too.
An S discussion group (perhaps net.lang.s) could be set up for the purposes
of sharing macros, new functions, ideas about data analysis, etc."

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