Publications by David Smith

Revolution’s 2010 roadmap

07.05.2010

As part of all the news from yesterday, we also announced our vision and roadmap for the Revolution R product line for 2010. You can see a short summary of our vision in this two-minute video, or see more details in the roadmap whitepaper available for download. But here’s a quick overview of our plans:First, we intend to make it possible to us...

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An economist explains: Why I use R

10.05.2010

Economist and R blogger JD Long gave a talk last week (as part of the vconf.org project) about why he uses R to do statistical forecasts of agricultural yield for the reinsurance company he works for. I couldn’t make the live session, but a replay is now available. The audio’s a bit choppy, but if you’ve every struggled with using Excel for...

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R function names, explained

11.05.2010

Why is the function to print out text in R named “cat”? Why is the function to delete objects called “rm”? Unless you have a background in Unix (or Linux) programming, some of R’s command names can seem, well, a bit arcane. Jeromy Anglim explains the provenance of many of R’s command names in this post: the details are not only intere...

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Webinar May 20: Introduction to Revolution R

11.05.2010

I’ll be giving a live webinar on Thursday next week (May 20) titled Introduction to Revolution R. If you’re new to the R world and wondering what you can do with R, this webinar is for you. I’ll also be introducing some of the functionality unique to Revolution R included in our Revolution R Community (free to everyone) and Revolution R Ent...

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Revolution Analytics and R in the news

12.05.2010

It was quite the media frenzy for Revolution and R last week. In conjunction with our relaunch as Revolution Analytics, we spoke to more than a dozen journalists and analysts to explain why we think R is at the center of a perfect storm for predictive analytics: with routine collection of large data sets, data analysis is now a commercial imperat...

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New R User Group in Boston

14.05.2010

There’s another new R User Group, this time in Boston: the New England R User Group. Their first meeting will be on Tuesday, May 25. Get all the info by joining the Google Group at the link below.Google Groups: New England R User Group Related To leave a comment for the author, please follow the link and comment on their blog: Revolutions. ...

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Because it’s Friday: Optical Illusion

14.05.2010

See more of the best illusions of 2010 at the link below.Best Illusion of the Year Contest: Top finalists in the 2010 contest Related To leave a comment for the author, please follow the link and comment on their blog: Revolutions. R-bloggers.com offers daily e-mail updates about R news and tutorials about learning R and many other topics. Cl...

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Winning the first game in a baseball series: a harbinger, or not?

17.05.2010

For those not familiar with the major-league baseball in the US (and despite living here for more than 10 years, I still include myself in that category), the games usually played in series: team A visits the home of team B, and the two teams play two or more games against each other on successive days. It’s common wisdom that if team A wins on...

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Parallel Computing with R for Life Sciences

18.05.2010

I hadn’t heard of the CloudAsia 2010 conference before, but from the programme the workshop Master Class on HPC Application For Life Sciences looked like it was interesting. One workshop session in particular caught my eye: Practical Parallel Computing in R by Xie Chao and Tan Tin Wee (from the National University of Singapore). The worksho...

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Introduction to Revolution R webinar tomorrow, May 20

19.05.2010

A quick reminder that I’ll be hosting a free webinar tomorrow. Mainly intended for those new to R and Revolution, An Introduction to Revolution R will give an overview and history of the R Project and the additional features of the Revolution R products. But even if you’ve used R before, there will be lots of useful tips and pointers to R res...

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