Publications by Luis
Scraping pages and downloading files using R
I have written a few posts discussing descriptive analyses of evaluation of National Standards for New Zealand primary schools.The data for roughly half of the schools was made available by the media, but the full version of the dataset is provided in a single-school basis. In the page for a given school there may be link to a PDF file with the i...
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Overlay of design matrices in genetic analysis
I’ve ignored my quantitative geneticist side of things for a while (at least in this blog) so this time I’ll cover some code I was exchanging with a couple of colleagues who work for other organizations. It is common to use diallel mating designs in plant and tree breeding, where a small number of parents acts as both males and females. For ...
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More sense of random effects
I can’t exactly remember how I arrived to Making sense of random effects, a good post in the Distributed Ecology blog (go over there and read it). Incidentally, my working theory is that I follow Scott Chamberlain (@recology_), who follows Karthik Ram (@_inundata) who mentioned Edmund Hart’s (@DistribEcology) post. I liked the discussion, ...
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Multisite, multivariate genetic analysis: simulation and analysis
The email wasn’t a challenge but a simple question: Is it possible to run a multivariate analysis in multiple sites? I was going to answer yes, of course, and leave it there but it would be a cruel, non-satisfying answer. We can get a better handle of the question if we use a simple example; let’s assume that we have two traits (call them tre...
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R pitfalls #4: redefining the basics
I try to be economical when writing code; for example, I tend to use single quotes over double quotes for characters because it saves me one keystroke. One area where I don’t do that is when typing TRUE and FALSE (R accepts T and F as well), just because it is clearer to see in code and syntax highlighting kicks in. That’s why I was surprised...
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When R, or any other language, is not enough
This post is tangential to R, although R has a fair share of the issues I mention here, which include research reproducibility, open source, paying for software, multiple languages, salt and pepper. There is an increasing interest in the reproducibility of research. In many topics we face multiple, often conflicting claims and as researchers we v...
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Matrix Algebra Useful for Statistics
I was having a conversation with an acquaintance about courses that were particularly useful in our work. My forestry degree involved completing 50 compulsory + 10 elective† courses; if I had to choose courses that were influential and/or really useful they would be Operations Research, Economic Evaluation of Projects, Ecology, 3 Calculus and 2...
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R for inquisition
A post on high-dimensional arrays by @isomorphisms reminded me of APL and, more generally, of matrix languages, which took me back to inquisitive computing: computing not in the sense of software engineering, or databases, or formats, but of learning by poking problems through a computer. I like languages not because I can get a job by using one...
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My R year
End-of-year posts are corny but, what the heck, I think I can let myself delve in to corniness once a year. The following code gives a snapshot of what and how was R for me in 2012. outside.packages.2012 <- list(used.the.most = c('asreml', 'ggplot2'), largest.use.decline = c('MASS', 'lattice'), ...
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An R wish list for 2013
First go and read An R wish list for 2012. None of the wishes came through in 2012. Fix the R website? No, it is the same this year. In fact, it is the same as in 2005. Easy to find help? Sorry, next year. Consistency and sane defaults? Coming soon to a theater near you (one day). Thus my wish list for 2012 is, very handy, still the wish list for...
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