Publications by David Smith
R is Hot: Part 1
This is Part 1 of a five-part article series, with new parts published each Thursday. You can download the complete article from the Revolution Analytics website. How Did a Statistical Programming Language Invented in New Zealand Become a Global Sensation? Much in the same way that social networking, reality TV and craft beer were considered mar...
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A competition to predict popular R packages
What makes an R package popular? The number of people that use a given R package is a common point of discussion, but it turns out that it's kind of tricky to get hard and fast data to answer this question. You can look at the “I use this” number on crantastic.org, but that's a self-reported number (many more than 38 people have installed ggp...
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New R User Group in Toronto
Canadian R user Leo Guelman contacted me last week to ask if there was an R User Group in Toronto. There wasn't one last week, but there's one now: Leo has taken the initiative to start a new useR group. The Greater Toronto Area (GTA) R User's Group is now active on meetup.com, and taking suggestions for their first meeting. If you're in the reg...
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The R-Files: Saptarshi Guha
“The R-Files” is an occasional series from Revolution Analytics, where we profile prominent members of the R Community. Name: Saptarshi Guha Background: Ph.D. in Statistics, Purdue University Nationality: India Years Using R: 6 Known for: Developing RHIPE package for R + Hadoop integration At just 31 years old, Saptarshi Guha has emerged as...
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RHIPE in the SD Times
Saptarshi Guha, who we profiled yesterday, is at the Hadoop World conference in New York City today. At 4PM, Saptarshi will give a presentation on RHIPE, his link between R and Hadoop. Saptarashi was interviewed yesterday by Alex Handy of the SD Times, where he talked about his background and his motivation to create RHIPE. Saptarshi was sponso...
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Impact of Google Instant on paid search
When Google introduced Google Instant (where search results are displayed as you type), it was certainly a boon for searchers. Personally, I've started visiting the Google homepage after years of just using the search box in Firefox (and now Chrome), and enjoying the improved search experience. (And I get to see those neat Doodles, too.) But not ...
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R is Hot: Part 2
This is Part 2 of a five-part article series, with new parts published each Thursday. You can download the complete article from the Revolution Analytics website. Critical Mass and Going ViralR was created in 1993 by Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman at the University of Aukland in New Zealand. It’s called R for the simple reason that both of its...
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R 2.12.0 released
As announced today, The new R 2.12.0 is now available in source form, and you'll soon be able to download R as an installable binary for Windows, Mac and Linux from your local CRAN mirror. In the meantime, if you're not building R yourself you can check out the list of new features in the NEWS file. As usual, there's a raft of new functions and f...
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Busting gay stereotypes with data
As a gay guy, you sometimes have to put up with some pretty offensive stereotypes that get thrown your way by extremists in the community and the media. These stereotypes are usually deployed in the form of anecdotes about how gay people are “promiscuous” or “corrupting”. These misrepresentative anecdotes have serious consequences, not j...
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Benoît B Mandelbrot, 1924-2010
Benoît Mandelbrot, the father of fractals, died Thursday at the age of 85. His obituary in the New York Times covers his life and work, and is also a well-written introduction to fractals. Mandelbrot's famous book, The Fractal Geometry of Nature, was an inspiration to me in high school: that a simple question like “How Long Is The Coast of Bri...
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