Comments for Bioinformatics Directory

Comment on Bioinformatics Introductory Statistics with R(Statistics and Computing) by Brian M. Napoletano

Brian M. Napoletano — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:36:11 +0000

Review by Brian M. Napoletano for Introductory Statistics with R (Statistics and Computing) Rating: I purchased this book after wading through the R help files for what seemed like hours. I was looking for a simple and straightforward guide that I could refer to for the basic operations of R. I am currently teaching myself C++ and learning how to interact with the Unix environment, but have very little experience with statistical programming. Therefore, I was looking for an accessible reference to help me become more comfortable with the R environment. *Introductory Statistics with R* provides concise answers to the "new user" questions that inevitably arise when programming in a new environment. In addition to its role as a programming resource, Dalgaard provides very useful information about the statistical methods he describes. I find this feature very useful as well, as I can rarely recall all the details of various statistical procedures from memory. My only caution is that this is an *introductory* guide to R. You will not find instructions for most (if any) of the additional libraries available to R. That said, I highly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning how to use R for statistical analyses.

Comment on Bioinformatics Introductory Statistics with R(Statistics and Computing) by Adam Baker

Adam Baker — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 09:26:32 +0000

Review by Adam Baker for Introductory Statistics with R (Statistics and Computing) Rating: As an introduction to R, this book is very good. It's much clearer than the R documentation that comes with the code, and satisfied most of my needs. The statistical text was not very helpful, however. Discussion is very brief, and several points that would seem important are dismissed as beyond the scope of the work. I wasn't able to get a handle on the statistical tests I wasn't familiar with to begin with. The ideal audience for the book is people who know the stats already, and would like to learn R.

Comment on Bioinformatics Introductory Statistics with R(Statistics and Computing) by Alan Mead

Alan Mead — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:56:50 +0000

Review by Alan Mead for Introductory Statistics with R (Statistics and Computing) Rating: This book provides a very readable introduction to basic statistical analysis using R (with occational references to S-Plus). The table of contents displays the topics and I thought they were generally well covered in enough detail to compute the statistics (but this is not a statistics text). Especially helpful are the additional analysis steps, such as graphing results, and the peripheral R issues. Small things I would change: expanded coverage of manipulating data (e.g., SPSS's RECODE, TEMPORARY, MERGE FILE,...), more explicit instructions on installing the example data (it's at the end of the installation Appendix), discussion of interactions in ANOVA and regression, discussion of ANCOVA, and finally I would have liked a quick overview of the available packages and the stats they provide. But these are small issues; it's a great book.

Comment on Bioinformatics Introductory Statistics with R(Statistics and Computing) by Isaac S. Kohane

Isaac S. Kohane — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 08:27:03 +0000

Review by Isaac S. Kohane for Introductory Statistics with R (Statistics and Computing) Rating: Despite the web, there are learning curves sufficiently steep that a well-organized book is the most effective introduction. However, too many of these introductions, particularly in programming and/or statistics are written with low content and high redundancy or with impenetrably high-density content. So, it is a rare sign of pedagogical mastery combined with the genuine confidence of the experienced practioner when an introductory book manages to achieve a balance that is just right.

As I become more familiar with R, I still carry around this book in my briefcase for the occasional reread during which I uncover a nugget I had missed. When I have told this to my colleagues in computer science or bioinformatics, they immediately reveal that they share my enthusiasm for Dalgaard's work.

Let's be clear: this is a book that walks you through introductory and highly useful statistics while introducing you to the most effective ways to use R to perform these biostatistical analyses. It is not a programming book, nor is that its intent.

Comment on Bioinformatics Introductory Statistics with R(Statistics and Computing) by Roger Peng

Roger Peng — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 07:41:33 +0000

Review by Roger Peng for Introductory Statistics with R (Statistics and Computing) Rating: Introductory Statistics with R is an important book for a rapidly developing field. R is an extremely powerful statistical computing environment which suffers from the same problem as almost every other free software project -- a lack of quality documentation. Dalgaard fills a major gap with this book, that is, a guide to using R for many standard statistical problems.For some time now, users have had to make do with S-PLUS books which contained some overlap with R. Now R users have a book they can call their own. After briefly discussing the R system and the language basics, Dalgaard goes through what might be covered in an advanced undergraduate data analysis course. Throughout the book, code examples and output are carefully interspersed so that the reader doesn't go too long without having a concrete example. Dalgaard leaves out some advanced topics such as time series, spatial statistics, etc. (some of which are nicely covered in Modern Applied Statistics with S by Venables and Ripley) but that is probably for the best. The book is not bloated, nicely priced and I would recommend it to any advanced undergrad or first year grad student wanting to learn how to do statistical analysis in R.

Comment on Euro-Par 2006: Parallel Processing: Workshops: CoreGRID 2006, UNICORE Summit 2006, Petascale Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Dresden, Germany, … Computer Science and General Issues) by Gridget

Gridget — Fri, 21 May 2010 13:04:54 +0000

Euro-Par 2006: Parallel Processing: Workshops: CoreGRID 2006 ……

[Source: Bioinformatics Resources: News, Jobs, Whitepapers, Classes, Company Listings] quoted: The concern of the 5 papers of the Petascale Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Workshop was to show what bioinformatics or computational biology appli…

Comment on Systems Biology/Bioinformatics Scientist – CFD Research Corporation – Huntsville, AL by Huntsville Jobs – Latest Huntsville Jobs news – Universities: Life after death

Mon, 17 May 2010 04:12:01 +0000

[...] Systems Biology/Bioinformatics Scientist – CFD Research … [...]

Comment on Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing ICAISC 2008: 9th International Conference Zakopane, Poland, June 22-26, 2008, Proceedings by Pensjonaty w Zakopanym » Blog Archive » Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing ICAISC 2008: 9th …

Sat, 15 May 2010 16:34:43 +0000

[...] Artificial Intelligence and Soft Computing ICAISC 2008: 9th … Zakopane ciekawostki [...]

Comment on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation – GECCO 2004: Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, Seattle, WA, USA, June 26-30, 2004, Proceedings, Part II by Amazon Customer

Amazon Customer — Thu, 13 May 2010 06:59:24 +0000

I don't understand how anyone from the conference would expect any interested parties to pay this ridiculous price for a paper copy of the proceedings.

The goal of GECCO should be to foster interest in the field, this is bound to turn off anyone looking to learn more about this interesting field.

I am a member of ACM.SIGEvo, and can get these proceedings on-line, but I too am disappointed by the pricing. It would be less embarrassing to not offer these proceedings for sale for this exorbitant price in the first place, it does more harm than good.
Rating: 1 / 5

Comment on Cancer Mortality and Morbidity Patterns in the U.S. Population: An Interdisciplinary Approach by Michael R. Chernick

Michael R. Chernick — Wed, 12 May 2010 17:54:24 +0000

The authors of this text are a demographer a mathematical physicist and an internal diseases MD. none are professional statisticians but they all have a good understand of mathematics and survival analysis and more importantly each has knowledge about cancer from different perspectives. The theme of the book is that conquering cancer requires an interdisciplinary approach because cancers are complicated diseases and the understanding requires stochastic models and real data. Data on cancer come from many sources. There is the laboratory experiments on cells and animals (often mice), the genetic aspects, the epidemiologic viewpoint and more. The authors know that breakthroughs are occurring on all levels but what has held things back in the compartmentalization of study disciplines and their unique jargon. This creates poor communication and makes it difficult to share results and synthesize results. But a multidisciplinary approach where everyone sheds their jargon and works together to understand what the other person is doing is the efficient way top attain success. I believe this has been proven over and over again in times of war when efficiency becomes a necessity. The Manhattan project with the scientists from various disciplines coming together at Los Alamos under the leadership of J.Robert Oppenheimer is the reason we developed the bomb ahead of Germany and Russia and in time to end the war with Japan.

This book is a compendium of hitory and methods in the fight against cancer and it provides in one source the detailed research from multiple disciplines To model and understand the various types of cancers and their similarities and differences. This is particularly exemplified in chapter 7. Each chapter has an extensive list of references. As the publisher states this book is the first of its kind to describe the interdisciplinary approach in biomedical studies. I agree with that and hope that there will be more to come like this.

Rating: 5 / 5