From h.wickham at gmail.com  Tue Sep 19 15:23:46 2006
From: h.wickham at gmail.com (hadley wickham)
Date: Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:23:46 -0500
Subject: [Rd] Help for methods
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> > But you also have to be able to identify if it is a S3 function or an
> > S4 method (or an ordinary function).
>
> Why not just type ?summary, which as I said, does tell you up front?

If R can save the novice user a couple of steps in their search for
help, why not do it?

Getting documentation on what the summary of an mle object does is
another example.  I tried:

 * summary.mle and summary.mle-class (of course I knew those wouldn't
work, but nothing in the documentation of mle suggests that it
wouldn't)

 * mle?summary and then summary?mle in case I had gotten it back to front

 * I finally run the example in mle and used ?summary(fit)


> > The reason I find this so much of a problem is that when you are
> > teaching R, one of the first things you want to do is teach your
> > students how to use help.  However, you can't teach them to use it
> > effectively until they know an awful lot about how the call semantics
> > of R.
>
> In many years of teaching S/R I have not found that to be a problem.

In my one year of teaching R I have.  How do you teach people how to use help?

Hadley




[Rd] Help for methods
hadley wickham