What is the difference between lm(offense$R ~ offense$OBP) and lm(R ~ OBP)?

Question

I am trying to use R to create a linear model and use that to predict some values. The subject matter is baseball stats. If I do this:

obp <- lm(offense         


        

Answer 1

There is no difference---you get the same coefficients.

But some programming styles are better than others -- and attach is to be avoided, as is the more verbose first form.

Most experienced users do

 lm(R ~ OBP, offense)

instead.