Publications by David Smith
Because it’s Friday: Statistician vs Scientist
This video brings flashbacks for my days as a statistics consultant to a medical school. Some days we just weren't speaking the same language…(With thanks to reader MK for the tip: “It's funny because it is true…”.) Related To leave a comment for the author, please follow the link and comment on their blog: Revolutions. R-bloggers.com...
609 sym
Some hints for the R Beginner: Avoiding "blank screen syndrome"
For new users, starting R for the first time can be a little daunting. Luckily, Patrick Burns of Burns Statistics has put together a handy tutorial to help the first-time R user get beyond “blank screen syndrome“: So you have successfully started R on your machine. Here's where the trouble sometimes starts — there's a big, huge prompt dari...
1537 sym
Google Summer of Code advances R
For the third year running, the Google Summer of Code program has sponsored a number of students working with R, and has again resulted in several new contributions expanding R in various fields. Dirk Eddelbuettel, who coordinated the R-related projects for GSoC in 2010, summarized the results, with details about the new packages now available fo...
1273 sym
NewTwitter design based on a Golden Spiral
I finally got the new version of Twitter yesterday, and it looks great. And that's no accident: according to the designer, the layout of the new Twitter interface is based on the Golden Spiral: You can describe the Golden Spiral by laying consecutive squares in a spiral fashion, each square being smaller than the last by a factor of the Golden ...
1405 sym R (907 sym/2 pcs) 2 img
Mandelbrot Set, evolved
The Mandelbrot Set is perhaps the most famous fractal of all time. It's simple in its definition: iterate the complex equation zn+1 = zn2 + c (starting with z0 = 0) for various values of c, and if doesn't go to infinity then c is part of the Mandelbrot Set. The result, however, is amazingly complex. Thinking of c as defining a 2-dimensiona...
1560 sym R (680 sym/1 pcs) 2 img
Fibonacci 1-liners
The other day, as an excuse to play around with custom iterators, I created some completely over-engineered code to calculate the Fibonacci sequences. But surely such a simple function can be implemented in fewer than my 15 lines? (Rick Wicklin, who writes the SAS blog The Do Loop, thinks so too.) We could use such a function to more easily show ...
1557 sym R (506 sym/4 pcs)
Because it’s Friday: I hate pennies
I was brought up in Australia, where we got rid of 1¢ and 2¢ coins in my childhood. Nobody missed them, at least as I recall. I certainly didn't: they were useless, even at the age when I might by lollies (candy) for 2¢ apiece. But then again, I'd never buy one, and with the new changes if I bought six of them, I'd get them for a discount as t...
1471 sym
Code Snippets in Revolution R
Ajay Ohri has been trying out the Code Snippets feature in Revolution R (available free to academics), and has found it handy for writing code for statistical analysis: Now even if you are averse to using a GUI /or GUI creators don’t have your particular analysis you can basically type in code at an extremely fast pace. It is useful to people ...
1128 sym
The Data Science Venn Diagram
Whenever I'm asked, “Who uses R?”, I usually rattle off a long list of job titles: statistician, analyst, quant, researcher … and that's before all the domain-specific titles. It would be nice if there were a simple, succinct phrase to describe the process of working with, analyzing, and communicating with real data.At the new blog, “data...
1812 sym 2 img
R is Hot
Our mission at Revolution Analytics is to make R the statistical analysis tool of choice in the workplace. But even though R is pervasive in academia and rising in popularity generally, we still sometimes get blank faces when we demonstrate R to potential new clients. Sure, most people have heard of R — it's been hard to miss in the news lately...
3559 sym