A comma-separated values (CSV) file is a typical way to store tabular/rectangular data. If a data cell contain a comma, then the cell with the commas is typically wrapped with quotes. However, what if a data cell contains a comma … Continued [Read more...]

Native GUI client access to MS-SQL and MySQL We can use Oracle SQL Developer with the jTDS driver to access Microsoft SQL Server. Note: jTDS version 1.3.0 did not work for me; I had to use version 1.2.6. Detailed instructions can be found here. We can use MySQL Workbench to access MySQL ... [Read more...]

I’ve been using Graphviz to create better decision tree graphics “by hand” for rpart objects created in R (final tree). I stumbled on this post that shows how one could convert an rpart object to a party project via the as.party function in partykit to utilize the plot ... [Read more...]

In the past, I’ve described how one could build multiarch (64 bit and 32 bit) versions of R on a 64 bit Ubuntu machine. The method based on this thread no longer works as of R 2.13 or 2.14 I believe. I received advice from someone on #R over on freenode (forgot who) a ... [Read more...]

I have the 64 bit version of R compiled from source on my Ubuntu laptop. I recently had a need for R based on 32 bit since a package I needed to compile and use only works in 32 bit. I thought it was readily available on Ubuntu since both 32 bit and 64 bit... ... [Read more...]

The following are notes for myself. I like to use the bleeding edge version of R: svn checkout https://svn.r-project.org/R/trunk/ r-devel cd r-devel ./tools/rsync-recommended ## use the following to update sources: svn update ## pre-reqs sudo apt-get build-dep r-base #sudo apt-get install gcc g++ gfortran libreadline-dev libx11... [Read more...]

I write code mainly in R, and from times to times, in C, C++, SAS, bash, python, and perl. There are style guides out there that help make your code more consistent and readable to yourself and others. Here is a style guide for C++, and here is Google’s ... [Read more...]

I use the snow package in R with OpenMPI and SGE quite often for my simulation studies; I’ve outlined how this can be done in the past. The ease of these methods make it so simple for me to just specify the maximum number of cores available all the ... [Read more...]

It’s true. I like to do my work in R and write using LaTeX (well, I prefer to use org-mode for less formal writing and/or if I don’t have to typeset a lot of math). I haven’t done a lot of LaTeX’ing or Sweaving in ... [Read more...]

I’m not very familiar with S4 classes and methods, but I assume it’s the recommended way to write new packages since it is newer than S3; this of course is open to debate. I’ll outline my experience of programming with S4 classes and methods in a later ... [Read more...]

Had to share this link today as I better read all the content it refers to and incorporate a lot of the recommended practices into my work flow. Thanks Tal Galili for compiling all those information. [Read more...]

Dear list, I brought up this issue before but a good solution never arised: being able to use screen on a remote server (so if something goes wrong on my side I can always resume that R session) inside of emacs in order to utilize ESS. The closest thing I ... [Read more...]

Recently I’ve learned how to do parallel computing in R on a cluster of machines thanks to the R packages snowfall, snow, and Rmpi. I’ve been using the SOCKET method with snowfall since together they make things simple. With these tools, I can reduce day/week long jobs ... [Read more...]

i usually run long simulations in R on a remote server. i’ve read an article on linux journal about emailing yourself after something happens…i forgot. since my jobs are long, and i usually have to run multiple jobs sequentially, it’d be nice to look at my results ... [Read more...]

so recently i’m learning how to compile and cross-compile R packages from source for windows machines, which means i have to create windows binaries. the first option is to build on a windows system, and the 2nd is to cross-build on an intel-based linux or mac system. i will ... [Read more...]

so these articles are ‘old news,’ but here i am to blog it down before i forget. First article is entitled “For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word – Statistics,” and the second article is entitled “Data Analysts Captivated by R’s Power.” It really does feel re-enforcing and motivating when ... [Read more...]

I finally have time to try parallel computing in R using snowfall/snow thanks to this article in the 1st issue of R journal, which replaces R news. I didn’t try it before because i didn’t have a good toy example, and it seemed like a steep learning ... [Read more...]

I don’t know how, but somehow, i stumbled on how to do this. I’ve always used emacs with ESS to run R, since spring 2006 (did it on windows, switched to linux, for years, and most recently, on my macbook). I liked this because i get the same usual ... [Read more...]

I got rubber to work with auctex and sweave (Rnw) files with the help of this. Basically, combined with my other stuff, I tweaked my .emacs file to look like: ;;following is AucTeX with Sweave -- works ;;http://andreas.kiermeier.googlepages.com/essmaterials (setq TeX-file-extensions '("Snw" "Rnw" "nw" "tex" "... [Read more...]

To save multiple graphics, e.g, Rplot001.pdf, Rplot002.pdf, …, Rplot050.pdf, we don’t have to call pdf() 50 times (or any similar function). Use “Rplot%03d.pdf” for filename in pdf() and each plot() call will be saved to a new pdf file. Use dev.off() once at the ... [Read more...]