Customer Reviews

An R and S Plus Companion to Applied Regression

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I found this book to be a good basic regression book that covers the basics and gives liberal examples with code, and points out differences between R, S-Plus, S3 and S4. The book does give some general background material on the basic systems, like working with arrays, matrices, writing programs and other basic details. Book also covers data transformation, linear models, generalized linear models, model diagnostics and graphing.

Fox is a sociologist and the examples come from his line of work, however this does not degrade the books ability to show regression modelling using R or S. Except for the specific examples the book plus the extra chapters available on the books website more or less covered what was covered in my graduate engineering regression class.

Topics such as nonlinear, robust, resampling, time series, nonparametric, while not covered in the book, chapters are however provided on the books website and appear to the same quality as what is in the rest of the book. Scripts for all the chapters, including the online-only chapters, are also available on the website.

I find this book helpful as a beginner's supplement to regressions in R. It explains in an easy way the basics of regression analysis in R. Thereby, it is generally understandable and easy to follow even for beginners. The book takes a focus on application and is logically structured, making easy steps first and adding one step to the other in a natural sequence (going from easy to more advanced models and techniques). The book does not cover more intricate regression models like multivariate regression.

Overall, this book is recommended for beginners in R who want to get started with regressions. Although R as an open-source software also allows you to find such information free on the web, I find this book a helpful companion.

This text is a fantastic introduction to most regression techniques as well as a wonderful reference to the R and SPlus languages. Although there are many regression texts out there, you will be hard pressed to find one that is as comprehensive and pithy as John Fox's. Not only that, if you want to take advantage of the very powerful (and free) R language, do not buy a manual. Buy this book instead. It's what I use.

I am not a statistician or programmer but was able to do some really good analysis using this book as my guide. I think this book would be good for college students or professionals looking to learn to utilize R, a powerful and free statistical software.