Statistics 200 , Spring 1996
Introduction to S-PLUS

This class provides an introduction to the SPLUS statistical language. SPLUS is based on the S language developed at Bell Labs by John Chambers and Richard Becker. It has become the accepted language for advanced statistical computing. New advances in statistical methodology are routinely made available as S-routines.

Unlike statistical packages such as SAS, Systat, SPSS or BMDP, S is a language for expressing statistical models and statistical procedures. There are many functions available in S for performing the routine statistical procedures such as regression, analysis of variance, survival analysis, plotting, tables; however, the essence of S is that you can modify the available functions, and write your own functions, to get what you want.

1. Setting up an SPLUS-directory, getting in and out of SPLUS, saving files, graphs, and output, editing, printing.
2. Objects, functions, operators, expressions, vectors
3. Simple Graphs
4. Matrices, array, input, data frames
5. Writing functions , source, sink ,batch
6. Recursive functions, functions that manipulate files and other funcy things
7. Advanced graphics
8. Setting up libraries and accessing libraries over the web
9. Serious regression
10. Your own Splus projects, which will include big data, and a big program.

1. Richard A. Becker, John M. Chambers, and Allan R. Wilks (1988) The New S Language: A programming environment for data analysis and graphics Wadsworth
2. W. N. Venables and B. D. Ripley (1995) Modern Applied Statistics with S-Plus Springer-Verlag.