What this essay is about?
In this essay, I write about:
- my journey with R
- my hopes for a futuristic statistical interface that I hope to someday build
I start with writing down initial impressions. Then I write about some frustrations and some reflections about the “steep learning curve”. In the end, I imagine a statistical interface that combines the best of all worlds of statistical software with the simplicity of using a keyboard and writing commands.
Reflections
I’ve probably installed R like 10 times before I took a class from a professor. This class had less than 10 students and was taught by a kind professor. I didn’t know that this was to be his first time teaching this particular linear regression class with R.
I was pleasantly surprised and eager to learn R. This was in 2019. Fast forward to 2025, I am thrilled everytime I open R. I love R. R is my first language in programming. It is where I learned how to write a function. It was the subject of my initial stack overflow questions. Stack overflow was worth the pain and embarassment.
I then loved shiny and stumbled upon Jamovi. I really liked the interactivity and was thrilled at the fast interactive experience. This was way different from outputs from other software which followed about a dozen clicks to get the same output with different variables.
Imaginations
I dream of creating an application that packages R and locks in a version with packages and build on that. I picture that it can build on top of R and make it easy to version and publish and easy to install, run, and replicate. That is my wish and imagination.