About Deducer

Why Deducer?

Deducer is designed to be a free easy-to-use alternative to proprietary data analysis software such as SPSS, JMP, and Minitab. It has a menu system to perform common data manipulation and analysis tasks, and an excel-like spreadsheet in which to view and edit data frames. The goal of the project is two fold.

• Provide an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) for R, encouraging non-technical users to learn and perform analyses without programming getting in their way. So it may lower the entry threshold.
• Increase the efficiency of expert R users when performing common tasks by replacing hundreds of keystrokes with a few mouse clicks. Also, as much as possible the GUI should not get in their way if they just want to do some programming.

Why Not?

• Deducer is java-dependend and therefore sometimes not stable (although it has been a long time since I had problems, but I work very rarely with the deducer package; maybe it is more stable these days)
• R is designed for text based interactions, the full functionality is not available through menues
• the course will be based on typing the commands but maybe the Deducer GUI helps to overcome your inhibition to use R

Installation

• there are instructions how to install at http://www.deducer.org/

• from within R:
  • run R
  • type library(JGR)
  • followed by JGR()
• there is also a script created during the installation; the path is shown when you start Deducer via R (e.g. \texttt{~/R/i686-pc-linux-gnu-library/2.14/JGR/scripts/run}

Prepare

• After you have installed deducer, you have to load the Deducer related packages (this extends the menues)

  • go to the packages & data menue in the menue bar

• choose Package Manager

• the package manager opens up:

  • by marking the checkboxes in the first column you can load packages (loaded)

  • by marking the ckeckboxes in the second column you can choose which packages you want to be automatically loaded every time you start Deducer (default)

  • the third and fourth columns show the name and a short description of the packages respectively

• scroll down to the Deducer and the DeducerExtra packages and mark for each of them both: the loaded and the default checkbox

• close the package manager by clicking on the Close button

• Now basic statistical procedures are available through the menues (and from now on in every session)

First Steps

• now we will test some functionalities
• so first we load an examples data set:

  • go to the Extras menue in the menue bar and choose Load data from package

• a little window opens up and you can choose a data set

• for now choose the Pima.te data set and click the Run button

Exercise

1. Find and load the MASS package.