New R Package for BEST (Bayesian ESTimation supersedes the t test)

June 5, 2013
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(This article was originally published at Doing Bayesian Data Analysis, and syndicated at StatsBlogs.)

A completely re-packaged version of the BEST software (from the article, "Bayesian estimation supersedes the t test") has been prepared by Michael E. Meredith. Mike is a key member of the Wildlife Conservation Society in Malaysia. For his new R package, Mike included additional MCMC diagnostic information, combined the two-group and one-group cases into a single function, made additional plot options and numerical-summary output, made the whole thing match conventional R style for plot commands, wrote new documentation, etc. Mike did all this completely independently of any prompt or help from me. I am very grateful for his efforts. The package looks great, and here's how to get it:

Open R. At the R command prompt, simply type:
install.packages("BEST")
Or, in RStudio, go through menu Tools,  Install Packages. You only need to install the BEST package once.

[Updated 05 June: When I initially posted this announcement yesterday, the binaries were not yet available on CRAN, and so I provided a set of instructions for how to install the package from its source code. Since then, the binaries have been posted, and installation takes only the single step above. Binaries for MacOS might be delayed another day or so.]

At the command line in R, type
library(BEST)
The functions for BEST are now in R's working memory. You need to do this command every time you invoke R.

Type
?BEST
to display a help file with a complete example of using the functions. Further documentation is available in this PDF that Mike prepared. Please note that the syntax of Mike's R package is a bit different than the original BEST programs. Perhaps the best way to learn the new syntax is to run the examples provided in the help file and PDF.

If you like the package, please let Mike know; his e-mail address is shown in the help files.



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