Publications by John Mount
Query Generation in R
R users have been enjoying the benefits of SQL query generators for quite some time, most notably using the dbplyr package. I would like to talk about some features of our own rquery query generator, concentrating on derived result re-use. Introduction SQL represents value use by nesting. To use a query result within another query one writes the...
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Playing With Pipe Notations
Recently Hadley Wickham prescribed pronouncing the magrittr pipe as “then” and using right-assignment as follows: I am not sure if it is a good or bad idea. But let’s play with it a bit, and perhaps readers can submit their experience and opinions in the comments section. Right assignment Right assignment is a bit of an oddity in programm...
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Getting Started With rquery
To make getting started with rquery (an advanced query generator for R) easier we have re-worked the package README for various data-sources (including SparkR!). Here are our current examples: rquery and MonetDBLite rquery and RPostgreSQL rquery and RSQLite rquery and SparkR rquery and sparklyr For the MonetDBLite the query diagrammer shows a ...
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More on Macros in R
Recently ran into something interesting in the R macros/quasi-quotation/substitution/syntax front: Romain François: “[email protected]_lionelhenry reveals planned double curly syntax At #satRdayParis as a possible replacement, addition to !! and enquo()” It appears !! is no longer the last word in substitution (it certainly wasn’t the fi...
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R Journal Volume 10/2, December 2018 is out!
We forgot to say: R Journal Volume 10/2, December 2018 is out! A huge thanks to the editors who work very hard to make this possible. And big “thank you” to the editors, referees, and journal for helping improve, and for including our note on pipes in R. Related To leave a comment for the author, please follow the link and comment on their...
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“If You Were an R Function, What Function Would You Be?”
We’ve been getting some good uptake on our piping in R article announcement. The article is necessarily a bit technical. But one of its key points comes from the observation that piping into names is a special opportunity to give general objects the following personality quiz: “If you were an R function, what function would you be?” Every...
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Binning Data in a Database
Roz King just wrote an interesting article on binning data (a common data analytics step) in a database. He compares a case-based approach (where the bin divisions are stuffed into code) with a join based approach. He shares code and timings. Best of all: rquery gets some attention and turns out to be the dominant solution at all scales measure...
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rquery Substitution
The rquery R package has several places where the user can ask for what they have typed in to be substituted for a name or value stored in a variable. This becomes important as many of the rquery commands capture column names from un-executed code. So knowing if something is treated as a symbol/name (which will be translated to a data.frame colum...
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Starting With Data Science: A Rigorous Hands-On Introduction to Data Science for Engineers
Starting With Data Science A rigorous hands-on introduction to data science for engineers. Win Vector LLC is now offering a 4 day on-site intensive data science course. The course targets engineers familiar with Python and introduces them to the basics of current data science practice. This is designed as an interactive in-person (not remote o...
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Data Manipulation Corner Cases
Let’s try some “ugly corner cases” for data manipulation in R. Corner cases are examples where the user might be running to the edge of where the package developer intended their package to work, and thus often where things can go wrong. Let’s see what happens when we try to stick a fork in the power-outlet. For our example let’s set u...
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