RFortunes @rfortunes@mamot.fr

The trouble with nonstandard evaluation is that it doesn't follow standard evaluation rules...
--Peter Dalgaard (about nonstandard evaluation in the curve() function)
R-help June 2011 #RStats

I think that it's generally a good idea not to resist the most natural way of programming in R.
--John Fox
R-help March 2004 #RStats

Basically R is reluctant to let you shoot yourself in the foot unless you are really determined to do so.
--Bill Venables (about the warning hist() issues when being called with unequal interval widths and freq=TRUE)
R-help May 2008 #RStats

Uwe Ligges: I just told nonsense, stepclass() does not make sense with randomForest(), obviously ... (wonder why nobody shouted?).
Douglas Bates: Oh, we're just so used to you talking nonsense that we don't bother to point it out any more :-)
--Uwe Ligges and Douglas Bates
R-help July 2005 #RStats

This should be FAQ 0.0. No other thing is asked as frequently as this. This is the FAQest of all FAQs, and a mother of all FAQs.
--Jari Oksanen (answering yet another question related to FAQ 7.31)
R-help February 2013 #RStats

Well..... SAS is SAS, but R is FREE...
--Abhishek Rathore (in a discussion about R vs. SAS)
LinkedIn Group Stat-Math Statistics July 2011 #RStats

It currently works (because I can't figure out how to make it an error) but you really should not do it.
--Hadley Wickham (discussing a user's ggplot experiences)
R-help October 2009 #RStats

You can't expect statistical procedures to rescue you from poor data.
--Berton Gunter (on dealing with missing values in a cluster analysis)
R-help April 2005 #RStats

4 bits are not enough for me!
--Philippe Grosjean (after conference dinner incl. wine in a conversation about the representation of data in the ff package)
useR! 2009, Rennes July 2009 #RStats

If you really want to assess uncertainty you need to take into account that the models are false and that several models may capture different aspects of the data and so be false in different ways.
--Brian D. Ripley
R-help July 2007 #RStats

See pages 45 and 46 of V&R's S PROGRAMMING for a definitive discussion of how to do this.
(Confession: I treat anything that V&R say as definitive).
--Berton Gunter (in reply to the question how to parse a '...' function argument)
R-help June 2005 #RStats

You seem to be falling prey to a common misconception that "R" is some monolithic tool, when in fact it is a herd of cats.
--Jeff Newmiller (in response to a user who did not look for packages)
R-help December 2013 #RStats

Spencer Graves: What do you think about adding a "No RTFM" policy to the R mailing lists?
Michael Dewey: You raise an interesting point but the responses to your post remind us that people (and indeed whole cultures) are not all situated at the same point on the continuum of directness between "It's a cow, stupid" and "From this side it looks not unlike a cow".
--Spencer Graves and Michael Dewey (reply after a long discussion of a potential "No RTFM" policy)
R-help August 2010 #RStats

Obviously I have not tested on an Alphabc...tuvwxyz system but it should work there.
--Brian D. Ripley (after fixing a problem discovered when compiling R 2.0.0 on Linux Alpha)
R-devel October 2004 #RStats

Excellent, Berwin!
Specifically the part about why the bug never really triggers wrong behavior. Your mail should be saved in 'The Annals of R' ...
--Martin Maechler (after Berwin A Turlach reported a buglet in 'spline_eval')
R-devel July 2005 #RStats

So it ***do not refuse*** to read the data. I do not expect some dwarf climbs out from your computer and says he will not read your data. Or is he?
?read.table gives you more details about how to read some data.
--Petr Pikal (after a post that said read.table() refuses to read unbalanced data)
R-help October 2004 #RStats

If we put in a function into rstan that dropped chains, people would use it.
--Ben Goodrich (about (not) discarding selected chains from a stanfit object)
Stan-users December 2016 #RStats

Eric Lecoutre: I don't want to die being idiot...
Peter Dalgaard: With age, most of us come to realise that that is the only possible outcome.
--Eric Lecoutre and Peter Dalgaard
R-help October 2004 #RStats

Gregor Gorjanc: But imagine how hard would it be to have two separate modes ... argh, probably a mess^2 or have I missed something obvious.
Martin Maechler: Yes, exactly: "Mess ^ 2" -- and if you allow both 'drop' and 'na.rm' options, it's "Mess ^ 3" -- not something anyone really wants!
--Gregor Gorjanc and Martin Maechler (in a discussion whether 'drop' should be set in options(), possibly depending on different user vs. programmer modes)
R-devel September 2006 #RStats

You need to get the hang of reading the online help. The information required is actually there in ?dotchart --- it's just tersely and obscurely expressed. A certain degree of optimism is required. You need to ***believe*** that the information is there; then ask yourself "What could they possibly mean by what they have written that would tell me what I need to know?".
--Rolf Turner (on reading the help pages)
R-help June 2013 #RStats