In case you missed them, here are some articles from March of particular interest to R users. Overview of "Targeted learning" packages for R, including SuperLearner and tmle. The 7 most common R error messages, by frequency of mentions on StackOverflow. Slides and a webinar replay on reproducible data analysis with ... [Read more...]

Hadley Wickham and the RStudio team have created some new packages for R, which will be very useful for anyone who needs to read data into R (that is, everyone). The readr package provides functions for reading text data into R, and the readxl package provides functions for reading Excel ... [Read more...]

In today's data-oriented world, just about every retailer has amassed a huge database of purchase transaction. Each transaction consists of a number of products that have been purchased together. A natural question that you could answer from this database is: What products are typically purchased together? This is called Market ... [Read more...]

A new version of DeployR, the server-based framework that provides simple and secure R integration for application developers, is now available. (If you're new to DeployR, take a look at the DeployR Overview or download the white paper, Using DeployR to Solve the R Integration Problem.) This update brings several ... [Read more...]

Revolution R Open 8.0.2 is now available from MRAN. If you're already using Revolution R Open, you won't find any major changes. This release fixes a couple of bugs, includes a new version of the checkpoint package, and splits the installation into two parts on Windows and Linux (with a separate ... [Read more...]

R has something of a reputation for generating, shall we say, obscure error messages like this: Error in model.frame.default(formula = y ~ female + DNC + SE_region + : could not find function "function (object, ...) nobject" One tip for dealing with error messages is to ignore everything between "Error in" and the ... [Read more...]

Thanks to all who attended my webinar earlier this week, Reproducibility with Revolution R Open and the Checkpoint Package. If you missed the live session, you can catch up with the slides and video replay which I've embedded below. If you just want to check out the demo of the ... [Read more...]

Since 2007, Karl Rexer has been collecting data on the tools, skills and practices of statisticians and data miners. Over the years, his semi-annual Data Miner Survey has expanded in scope, and now includes research on the topics of data science, big data, and analytics applications on business. Unlike research conducted ... [Read more...]

A quick heads-up that tomorrow (Tuesday) at 10AM Pacific Time I'll be giving a live (and free) webinar: Reproducibility with Revolution R Open and the Checkpoint Package. I'll show you how to use the latest version of the checkpoint package to write R scripts without having to worry about unexpected ... [Read more...]

The On Broadway project collected more than 600,000 photographs taken near Broadway in New York City during a six-month period in 2014. If you're in New York, you can explore the images in an interactive installation at the New York Public Library though the end of this year. You can also explore ... [Read more...]

A new version of the checkpoint package for R has just been released on CRAN. With the checkpoint package, you can easily: Write R scripts or projects using CRAN package versions from a specific point in time; Share R scripts with others that will automatically install the appropriate package versions (... [Read more...]

It's hard to overstate the role of open-source software in the data science revolution. Tools like Hadoop, Spark, R, and Python are essential parts of the modern data science toolkit. These tools are likewise part of the solutions built by the Consulting Services group at Revolution Analytics. Our VP of ... [Read more...]

DeployR is a server-based framework that provides simple, secure R integration for application developers. It's available in two editions: DeployR Open, which is free and open-source; and Revolution R Enterprise DeployR, which adds a scalable grid framework and enterprise authentication features for production applications integrated with R. If you're looking ... [Read more...]

In case you missed them, here are some articles from February of particular interest to R users. The John M. Chambers Statistical Software Award announcement for 2015. The new R package "distcomp" allows researchers to collaborate on data spread across multiple sites. David Smith's interview with theCUBE on R, data science, ... [Read more...]

R 3.1.3, the final update in the R 3.1 series, has been released. As of this writing only the source distribution is currently available, but expect binary builds for Windows, Mac and various Linux platforms to appear soon on your local CRAN mirror. As has become usual in March, this release is ... [Read more...]

It's fair to say that Hadley Wickham, chief scientist at RStudio and a new member of the R Foundation, has made great contributions to the R community. Not only is he the author of several R-related books including Advanced R, Hadley is also the author of dozens of R packages ... [Read more...]

Given all the attention the internet has given to the colors of this dress, I thought it would be interesting to look at the capabilities for extracting colors in R. R has a number of packages for importing images in various file formats, including PNG, JPG, TIFF, and BMP. (The ... [Read more...]

Computerworld's Sharon Machlis has done a great service for the R community — and R especially novices — by creating the on-line Beginner's Guide to R. You can read our overview of her guide from 2013 here, but it's been regularly updated since then. As an added bonus, the guide is now available ... [Read more...]

In 1998 John M. Chambers (now a member of R-core) won the ACM Software System Award for the S Language, which (in the words of the committee) "forever altered how people analyze, visualize, and manipulate data". John graciously donated the prizemoney to support budding researchers in statistical computing: his Statistical Software ... [Read more...]

It was a pleasure to appear live on theCUBE last week while attending the Strata conference. In my interview with Jeff Kelly and John Furrier, I talked about the rising popularity of R, the applications of data science, and the recent announcement of Microsoft acquiring Revolution Analytics. I also gushed ... [Read more...]