Posted by Jonathan Carroll

Thou shalt not compare numeric values (except when it works)

This was just going to be a few Tweets but it ended up being a bit of a rollercoaster of learning for me, and I haven’t blogged in far too long, so I’m writing it up quickly as a ‘hey look at that’ example for newcomers. I’ve been working on the ‘merging data’ part of my book and, as … Continue reading →

Data Munging With R Preview — Storing Values (Assigning)

Since about October last year, I’ve been writing an introduction to R book. It’s been quite the experience. I’ve finally started making time to document some of the interesting things I’ve learned (about R, about writing, about how to bring those two together) along the way. The book … Continue reading →

2016 Australian Federal Election Flexdashboard

Here in the land down under we’ve finally completed our Federal election. We complain that it seems to go on for too long, but it’s a brief distraction compared to the USA electoral process. I managed to do a small analysis on the votes at a finer scale than I thought would be … Continue reading →

2016 Australian Federal Election Flexdashboard

Here in the land down under we've finally completed our Federal election. We complain that it seems to go on for too long, but it's a brief distraction compared to the USA electoral process. I managed to do a small analysis on the votes at a finer scale than I thought would be available, and … Continue reading →

Images as x-axis labels (updated)

They say “if you want to find an answer on the internet, just present a wrong one as fact. Then wait.“ It didn’t take long, actually. Despite my searches while trying to get images into x-axis labels it seems I overlooked a working, significantly less hacky implementation. My … Continue reading →

Images as x-axis labels (updated)

They say "if you want to find an answer on the internet, just present a wrong one as fact. Then wait." It didn't take long, actually. Despite my searches while trying to get images into x-axis labels it seems I overlooked a working, significantly less hacky implementation. My Google-fu had in fact … Continue reading →

Images as x-axis labels

Open-source software is awesome. If I found that a piece of closed-source software was missing a feature that I wanted, well, bad luck. I probably couldn’t even tell if was actually missing or if I just didn’t know about it. When the source is available, maintained, and documented … Continue reading →

Images as x-axis labels

Open-source software is awesome. If I found that a piece of closed-source software was missing a feature that I wanted, well, bad luck. I probably couldn't even tell if was actually missing or if I just didn't know about it. When the source is available, maintained, and documented however, things … Continue reading →

From a (set.)seed grows a mighty dataset

Can you predict the output from this code? printStr <- function(str) paste(str, collapse="") set.seed(12173423); x <- sample(LETTERS, 5, replace=TRUE) set.seed(7723132); y <- sample(LETTERS, 5, replace=TRUE) paste(printStr(x), printStr(y)) Okay, the first bit is … Continue reading →

From a (set.)seed grows a mighty dataset

Can you predict the output from this code? printStr <- function(str) paste(str, collapse="") set.seed(12173423); x <- sample(LETTERS, 5, replace=TRUE) set.seed(7723132); y <- sample(LETTERS, 5, replace=TRUE) paste(printStr(x), printStr(y)) Okay, the first bit is … Continue reading →

Bad Neighbours (no, not the movie)

Another day, another compulsion to see if I can do any better than someone's solution. This one also comes from the FiveThiryEight Puzzler challenge courtesy of Xi'an The original challenge this time was The misanthropes are coming. Suppose there is a row of some number, N, of houses in a new, … Continue reading →

Bad Neighbours (no, not the movie)

Another day, another compulsion to see if I can do any better than someone’s solution. This one also comes from the FiveThiryEight Puzzler challenge courtesy of Xi’an The original challenge this time was The misanthropes are coming. Suppose there is a row of some number, N, of houses … Continue reading →

Solving Inequality (the math kind)

This neat approach showed up recently as an answer to a FiveThirtyEight puzzle and of course I couldn’t help but throw it at dplyr as soon as I could. Turns out that’s not a terrible idea. The question posed is optimise 200a + 100b + 50c + 25d under the constraints 400a + 400b + 150c + … Continue reading →

Solving Inequality (the math kind)

This neat approach showed up recently as an answer to a FiveThirtyEight puzzle and of course I couldn't help but throw it at dplyr as soon as I could. Turns out that's not a terrible idea. The question posed is optimise 200a + 100b + 50c + 25d under the constraints 400a + 400b + 150c + 50d ≤ … Continue reading →

#auunconf slack users’ timezone locations

I had never used slack before, but had read a heap of tech articles extolling its virtues. Apparently this is what our current Prime Minister advocates within Cabinet. The upcoming #auunconf organising team set up a channel and invited the participants, so I checked it out. Slack is pretty awesome … Continue reading →