This is pretty cool. As a mathematician, I feel like they should get to R instead of, say, how to use IRC or emacs, but I'm sure that's just my bias.
When I was an undergrad, every 3rd year student had to take a class that involved write a 20-page position paper. Those of us in the hard sciences were required publish in LaTeX, which drove the English professors running the class crazy. It was good practice, though.
The closest our school came to anything like this was informal seminars the math department would run, with seniors and grad students tutoring sophomores on how to use R, MATLAB, LaTeX, and similar.
We even did ALP for the actuaries among us. I love the language, but trying to teach it is another story.
When I was an undergrad, every 3rd year student had to take a class that involved write a 20-page position paper. Those of us in the hard sciences were required publish in LaTeX, which drove the English professors running the class crazy. It was good practice, though.
The closest our school came to anything like this was informal seminars the math department would run, with seniors and grad students tutoring sophomores on how to use R, MATLAB, LaTeX, and similar.
We even did ALP for the actuaries among us. I love the language, but trying to teach it is another story.