Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Skip this paragraph if you know about R and Excel.... R is a powerful programming language that is useful for generating scientific graphics (both simple and extremely complex) and for statistical work. Unfortunately it has a steep learning curve and many say the help files are not particularly helpful for novices. Excel has a user friendly system for entering data and doing basic graphics but has relatively very limited tools for statistics or complex scientific graphics. Combining the strengths of the two is the goal of this book and the free software that goes with it.
With the tools described in this book the user can point and click their way to common analyses and graphics inside of Excel without having to learn to write code in the R programming language. Both the software and book are good but not great because they do not add much to the existing tools for R.
Years ago, John Fox wrote a point-and-click code-generating add-on package for R called R Commander that revolutionized the usability of R. Inside of the R programming environment you can download the Rcmdr package and type library(Rcmdr) and get practically all the same functionality as the tools provided here. What the authors of this book do is bring the functionality of Rcmdr into a Excel as an add-on to the Excel 2003 menus or 2007 ribbon. The implementation is surprisingly smooth (including adding nice right-click menu items) and bug free.
The book itself is mostly nicely rendered color pictures. Think of it as a very well annotated PowerPoint presentation. You will be able to quickly page through it and it is well indexed. The less than 10 page appendix which explains how to install the R packages and required services (or how to install from scratch) is probably the most useful part of the book. The authors do not focus much on the "behind the scenes" strengths of their work which allow you to recalculate and pass information into and out of R "on the fly." However, they do include a few worksheets that demonstrate the ability to pass information into R and return graphics effortlessly. Think of this as the ability to add sliders and push buttons to Excel and have instantly updated high quality graphics. Unfortunately, they only give one example where they use there new RApply function to return a calculated value from R into Excel. There clearly is a lot of functionality but the book does not explain it.
If you are just starting with R this book will probably be a HUGE help to you because it saves you from memorizing a lot of code and it will help you learn how to write code by showing you the commands that were used to generate analyses and graphics. However, if you have experience with R and Rcmdr you probably want to save your money.
Click Here to see more reviews about: R Through Excel: A Spreadsheet Interface for Statistics, Data Analysis, and Graphics (Use R)
In this book, the authors build on RExcel, a free add-in for Excel that can be downloaded from the R distribution network. RExcel seamlessly integrates the entire set of R's statistical and graphical methods into Excel, allowing students to focus on statistical methods and concepts and minimizing the distraction of learning a new programming language.
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