Publications by Derek Jones
Ordinary Least Squares is dead to me
Most books that discuss regression modeling start out and often finish with Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) as the technique to use; Generalized Least Squares (GLS) sometimes get a mention near the back. This is all well and good if the readers’ data has the characteristics required for OLS to be an applicable technique. A lot of data in the soc...
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Converting graphs in pdf files to csv format
Looking at a graph displayed as part of a pdf document is so tantalizing; I want that data as a csv! One way to get the data is to email the author(s) and ask for it. I do this regularly and sometimes get the apologetic reply that the data is confidential. But I can see the data! Yes, but we only got permission to distribute the paper. I unde...
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Performing a non-local return in R
In most languages return is a statement, but in R it is a function (in fact R does not really have statements, it only has expressions). This function-like behavior of return is useful for figuring out the order in which operations are performed, e.g., the value returned by return(1)+return(2) tells us that binary operators are evaluated left to...
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By now I ought to feel more knowledgeable about R
I was surprised to find recently that there are now over 15,000 lines of R code in the book I am working on. If I had written that much code in another ‘newly’ acquired language I would probably feel a lot more knowledgeable about it than I currently feel about R. Why don’t I feel more knowledgeable about R? Those 15,000 lines are not all...
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Hack, a template for improving code reliability
My sole prediction for 2014 has come true, Facebook have announced the Hack language (if you don’t know that HHVM is the Hip Hop Virtual Machine you are obviously not a trendy developer). This language does not follow the usual trend in that it looks useful, rather than being fashion fluff for corporate developers to brag about. Hack extends a...
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Oh, I did not know that [about R]
(This article was first published on The Shape of Code » R, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers)I recently saw a post about something called ValidR and as somebody with a long standing professional interest in language validation immediately read the article and referenced links. I was disappointed to find that what was being validated was the...
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An ISO Standard for R (just kidding)
IST/5, the British Standards’ committee responsible for programming languages in the UK, has a new(ish) committee secretary and like all people in a new role wants to see a vision of the future; IST/5 members have been emailed asking us what we see happening in the programming language standards’ world over the next 12 months. The answer is, ...
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Creating a map showing land covered by rising sea levels
I joined the Geekli.st climate Hackathon this weekend at the Hub Westminster (my favorite venue for Hackathons). While the organizers had lots of enthusiasm they had very little in the way of data for us to work on. No problem, ever since the Flood-relief hackathon I have wanted to use the SRTM ‘whole Earth’ elevation data on a flood relate...
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A book about some important bits of R
I see that Hadley Wickham’s new book, “Advanced R”, is being published in dead tree form and will be available a month or so. Hadley has generously made the material available online; I quickly skimmed the material a few months ago when I first heard about it and had another skim this afternoon. The main problem with the book is its title...
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Ratfor, R, RUNOFF, RPG and Ruby
R is for Ratfor, R, RUNOFF, RPG and Ruby Ratfor is a structured form of Fortran from the days when structured programming was the in-thing and Fortran did not have much of it (lots got added in later revisions). I think its success came from allowing users to claim a degree of respectability that Fortran did not have, and which Fortran did not a...
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