Preface

added a complete new graphical user interface to the existing S-PLUS programming environment. It allowed non-programming minded users to access the advanced visualization techniques and modern analysis methods of S-PLUS. As a result, S-PLUS has gained enormous popularity over the past years among applied statisticians and data analysts. Over the last three years the content of this book has been used for introductory courses on S-PLUS. This book is aimed at people who are (completely) new to S-PLUS. It covers the graphical user interface of S-PLUS and introduces the underlying S language. The main goal of this book is to get you started and the best way to do that is to use this book interactively during an S-PLUS session. After reading this book you should be able to import data into the system, do some data manipulation and data cleaning. Furthermore, you should be able to visualize your data, apply statistical functions to your data, enter basic S-PLUS commands and write functions. The first edition of this book appeared in 1999, it was aimed at users of S-PLUS 2000. This edition is updated for S-PLUS 6 (see Appendix C for a list of new features). Chapters 8 and 9 about the S language have been restructured and extended. Throughout the book more examples are given, spelling mistakes and other errors have been corrected. Of course if you have suggestions on improving this book you can contact the author by electronic mail