{"id":15273,"date":"2010-04-21T12:06:18","date_gmt":"2010-04-21T18:06:18","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010534b1db25970b0134800854d4970c"},"modified":"2010-04-21T12:06:18","modified_gmt":"2010-04-21T18:06:18","slug":"why-use-r-because-thats-what-the-pros-use","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/2010\/04\/why-use-r-because-thats-what-the-pros-use\/","title":{"rendered":"Why use R? Because that&#8217;s what the pros use"},"content":{"rendered":"<!-- \r\n<div style=\"min-height: 30px;\">\r\n[social4i size=\"small\" align=\"align-left\"]\r\n<\/div>\r\n-->\r\n\r\n<div style=\"border: 1px solid; background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #EDEDED; margin: 1px; font-size: 12px;\">\r\n[This article was first published on  <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.revolution-computing.com\/2010\/04\/why-use-r-because-thats-what-the-pros-use.html\"> Revolutions<\/a><\/strong>, and kindly contributed to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">R-bloggers<\/a>].  (You can report issue about the content on this page <a href=\"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/contact-us\/\">here<\/a>)\r\n<hr>Want to share your content on R-bloggers?<a href=\"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/add-your-blog\/\" rel=\"nofollow\"> click here<\/a> if you have a blog, or <a href=\"http:\/\/r-posts.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow\"> here<\/a> if you don't.\r\n<\/div>\n\n<p>I had the great pleasure of sitting down for a beer with Steve O&#8217;Grady (from the open-source analyst group <a href=\"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">RedMonk<\/a>), at the MySQL conference last week. It was great to get the perspective of someone who knows the tech industry so well, sees predictive analytics as a hot area, and is taking an active interest in statistics and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.revolution-computing.com\/community\/r-project.php\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">R<\/a> (Steve has been getting into R programming recently). I asked him, amongst all the software tools available, why choose to learn R for predictive analytics? He answered with a great analogy to scuba diving, which he just <a href=\"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/2010\/04\/21\/watch-the-professionals\/\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">shared<\/a> on his blog:<\/p>\n\n<blockquote>\n<p>I had the opportunity to dive in a lot of interesting places, from Key West to Cayman Brac to Bonaire to plain old Rockport, MA. One of the things I noticed was that most of the professionals, pretty much to a person, used the same BCD [scuba equipment]: workman-like, beat up Scubapro designs. Ugly, even industrial-looking, but functional. Day after day, dive after dive.<\/p>\n\n<p>Which begged the question that so many ask themselves in so many industries: what did I know about diving that the professionals did not?<\/p>\n\n<p>Exactly. My next BCD, which I still own today, was a Scubapro.<\/p>\n\n<p>I relate this story here because I told it to REvolution Computing\u2019s David Smith last week to explain our interest in the R language.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>I love this analogy. R today may not be as pretty as some of the alternatives (though we do have big plans for REvolution R), but it sure is functional, reliable and powerful. And that&#8217;s why the <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.revolution-computing.com\/2009\/09\/google-uses-r-to-predict-economic-activity.html\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">professionals<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.revolution-computing.com\/2009\/06\/nyt-charts-michael-jacksons-pop-hits.html\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">are<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.revolution-computing.com\/2009\/02\/how-google-and-facebook-are-using-r.html\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">using<\/a> it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n<p>tecosystems: <a href=\"http:\/\/redmonk.com\/sogrady\/2010\/04\/21\/watch-the-professionals\/\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">Watch the Professionals<\/a><\/p><p><\/p>\n\n<div style=\"border: 1px solid; background: none repeat scroll 0 0 #EDEDED; margin: 1px; font-size: 13px;\">\r\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\">To <strong>leave a comment<\/strong> for the author, please follow the link and comment on their blog: <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.revolution-computing.com\/2010\/04\/why-use-r-because-thats-what-the-pros-use.html\"> Revolutions<\/a><\/strong>.<\/div>\r\n<hr \/>\r\n<a href=\"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">R-bloggers.com<\/a> offers <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=RBloggers\" rel=\"nofollow\">daily e-mail updates<\/a><\/strong> about <a title=\"The R Project for Statistical Computing\" href=\"https:\/\/www.r-project.org\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">R<\/a> news and tutorials about <a title=\"R tutorials\" href=\"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/how-to-learn-r-2\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">learning R<\/a> and many other topics. <a title=\"Data science jobs\" href=\"https:\/\/www.r-users.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow\">Click here if you're looking to post or find an R\/data-science job<\/a>.\r\n\r\n<hr>Want to share your content on R-bloggers?<a href=\"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/add-your-blog\/\" rel=\"nofollow\"> click here<\/a> if you have a blog, or <a href=\"http:\/\/r-posts.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow\"> here<\/a> if you don't.\r\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had the great pleasure of sitting down for a beer with Steve O&#8217;Grady (from the open-source analyst group RedMonk), at the MySQL conference last week. It was great to get the perspective of someone who knows the tech industry so well, sees predictive analytics as a hot area, and &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":20631,"url":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/2010\/06\/supercharging-business-analytics-with-r\/","url_meta":{"origin":15273,"position":0},"title":"Supercharging business analytics with R","date":"June 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Really pleased with how our webinar today, Supercharge BI and Dashboards with Predictive Analytics, turned out. Steve Miller from OpenBI gave a great introduction to the motivations and need for predictive analytics. Andrew Lampitt from Jaspersoft was next up, with an overview of the Jaspersoft system for BI reports and\u2026","rel":"nofollow","context":"In \"R bloggers\"","img":{"src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":20429,"url":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/2010\/06\/reminder-supercharging-bi-with-r-webinar-tomorrow\/","url_meta":{"origin":15273,"position":1},"title":"Reminder: Supercharging BI with R webinar tomorrow","date":"June 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"If you haven't done so already, it's not too late to register for tomorrow's 1-hour webinar, Supercharge BI and Dashboards with Predictive Analytics. I'll be one of the presenters, talking about R and its applications for business intelligence. The topics and speakers will be: Introduction: Analytics and BI (Steve Miller,\u2026","rel":"nofollow","context":"In \"R bloggers\"","img":{"src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10430,"url":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/2010\/03\/statistical-learning-with-mars\/","url_meta":{"origin":15273,"position":2},"title":"Statistical learning with MARS","date":"March 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Steve Miller at the InformationManagement blog has been looking at predictive analytics tools for business intelligence applications, and naturally turns to the statistical modeling and prediction capabilities of R. Says Steve: The R Project for Statistical Computing continues to dazzle in the open source world, with exciting new leadership at\u2026","rel":"nofollow","context":"In \"R bloggers\"","img":{"src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15273"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.r-bloggers.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}