One of the coolest R packages I heard about at the useR! Conference: Toby Dylan Hocking‘s directlabels package for putting labels directly next to the relevant curves or point clouds in a figure. I think I first learned about this idea from Andrew Gelman: that a separate legend requires a lot of back-and-forth glances, so 
John Kay muses on interpreting statistical data:
Always ask of such data “what is the question to which this number is the answer?”. “Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation on a like-for-like basis before allowance for exceptional restructuring costs” is the answer to the question “what is the highest profit number we can present without attracting...
John Kay muses on interpreting statistical data:
Always ask of such data “what is the question to which this number is the answer?”. “Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation on a like-for-like basis before allowance for exceptional restructuring costs” is the answer to the question “what is the highest profit number we can present without attracting flat disbelief?”.
![Le Monde puzzle [#737]](http://xianblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/lemonde737-e1314000706256.jpg?w=450&h=348)
The puzzle in the weekend edition of Le Monde this week can be expressed as follows: Consider four integer sequences (xn), (yn), (zn), and (wn), such that and, if u=(xn,yn,zn,wn), for i=1,…,4, if ui is not the maximum of u and otherwise. Find the first return time n (if any) such that xn=0. Find the value 
I was recently asked how to implement time series cross-validation in R. Time series people would normally call this “forecast evaluation with a rolling origin” or something similar, but it is the natural and obvious analogue to leave-one-out cross-validation for cross-sectional data, so I prefer to call it “time series cross-validation”. Here is some example
R code examples on various clustering techniques are available as “Clustering in R” in Chapter 4 of R & Bioconductor Manual by Thomas Girke, UC Riverside. It provides R examples on - Hierarchical Clustering, including tree cutting/coloring and heatmaps, - … Continue reading →
Let’s take Modest Modeest for Moving Average one step further and use it in a basic tactical allocation system using Vanguard funds. THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE AND VERY EASILY MIGHT CAUSE LARGE LOSSES. VANGUARD FUNDS IMPOSE EARLY REDEM...
The forecast package for R has undergone a major upgrade, and I’ve given it version number 3 as a result. Some of these changes were suggestions from the forecasting workshop I ran in Switzerland a couple of months ago, and some have been on the drawing board for a long time. Here are the main
Here's a quick cheat-sheet on string manipulation functions in R, mostly cribbed from Quick-R's list of String Functions with a few additional links.
DataMarket, a portal that provides access to more than 14,000 data sets from various public and private sector organizations, has more than 100 million time series available for download and analysis. (Check out this presentation for more info about DataMarket.) And now with the new package rdatamarket, it's trivially easy to import those time series into R for charting,...
Zero Inflated Models and Generalized Linear Mixed Models with R.
Zuur, Saveliev, Ieno (2012).
