Budapest BI 2015

There is a rich field of economic and business applications for statistical data analysis and R: From Human Resources to Finance. In 2013 the FOM, a private university of applied sciences for professionals studying while working with more than 30 study centres across Germany, decided to use R compulsory in all statistical courses in all the different Master programs and in all study centres. By using R Commander (Fox, 2005), real life data sets, step-by-step installation guidelines as well offering a portable version with preinstalled packages and a support email address we tried to facilitate and motivate the start and working with R. Coping with the heterogeneity of students, lecturers and computer platforms like Windows and Mac OS there are some pitfalls in such a teaching project, but also some opportunities, which were also revealed in an evaluation of students and lectures alike.