Blog purpose and background

My goal is to provide code samples and other tutorials to help others in their analyses. Right now my coding is in three programs/languages: R, SAS, and postgreSQL.  I will also post photos from my field work and other outdoor adventures from time to time.

Where I started for each and what I'd do differently

R

I opened up a A Beginner's Guide to R (Use R!) on a rainy day in spring 2012 and spent an afternoon following the examples.  Since then, I've used a combination of google searching "what I want to do" + "in R" and a few books.  I'm pretty happy with my approach to this so far.

Details on how I'll present R code on this blog are here.

Relational databases

I grappled with this one a while and still do, so no good beginner book recommendations other than stay away from the pretty graphs in Access.  I started with Microsoft Access and those point-and-click queries in ... 2006?  Anyway, point-and-click got frustrating quickly, as that never did quite what I wanted.  I was told to query properly.  So I used JetSQL in Access.  A few years ago on the advice of a real programmer, I migrated to postgreSQL and pgadmin.

What I'd do differently: start with postgreSQL instead of Access.  It's more complicated, but so much easier to not have to convert your database from the partially automated drop-down menus in Access to an easier-to-query format later.  postgreSQL also is more powerful, which I ran into recently while trying to help a colleague use JetSQL.  Some things I was used to doing in postgreSQL were more complex or impossible in JetSQL.  I'd also have read up a little on database structuring and have thought out my database structure more.  I've had to do several big re-structurings of the architecture since I started.  I think I've finally got it where I can easily integrate new tables if needed.

Long story short: it's easier and more efficient in the long run if you just go ahead and learn to query using SQL (Structured Query Language).

SAS

I learned using code snippets from a class in 2008 and, since then, deep ventures into the help files.  I am trying to convert to R mostly, so mainly I will post SAS code to compare with R code.  Using Multivariate Statistics (Tabachnik and Fidell 2007) has lots of good SAS code to use.  So, sometimes it's simplest just to follow their examples if you have that book and a problem that it addresses.