R commander depends on lots of other packages to function properly, so to install it along with all it's dependencies, type this in at the R command line:
install.packages("Rcmdr", dependencies=TRUE)
Note that this may take 5-10 minutes depending on your connection since it's downloading lots of extra packages, but you only need to do that once. Now that it's installed, any time you want to load it, open R and type:
library(Rcmdr)
If you're familiar with Stata or SPSS you should find the menus and dialog boxes intuitive and self-explanatory. I've put in a couple screenshots below showing R commander's data editor, GLM tool, and graphics menu.
There are a few other GUIs for R that I've never used, including Rattle (the R Analytical Tool To Learn Easily), and JGR (Java Gui for R). If you prefer one of these to Rcmdr, let us here why in the comments!
The R Commander: A Basic-Statistics GUI for R
R Commander also looks a lot like Minitab; people familiar with Minitab should have little trouble getting started with R Commander, once they figure out how to load data.
ReplyDeleteI've not used Rattle, but I've tried JGR and find little or no advantage to it over the default Windows or Mac installation. In fact, it seems to be nearly a straight-up copy of the Mac interface for R. Maybe I've missed something.
Of the front-ends for R that I've tried, R Commander seems to be the easiest to get started with. Deducer, Red R and R Analytic Flow all seem promising, too, though I've not been able to get Deducer to install correctly, Red R is still very much a beta product and Analytic Flow always seems to be incompatible with the latest versions of R.
(http://www.deducer.org/)
(http://www.red-r.org)
(http://www.ef-prime.com/products/ranalyticflow_en/)