Articles by bryan

Calling Python from R with rPython

January 13, 2014 | bryan

Python has generated a good bit of buzz over the past year as an alternative to R. Personal biases aside, an expert makes the best use of the available tools, and sometimes Python is better suited to a task. As a case in point, I recently wanted to pull data ...
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Global Indicator Analyses with R

May 13, 2013 | bryan

I was recently asked by a client to create a large number of “proof of concept” visualizations that illustrated the power of R for compiling and analyzing disparate datasets. The client was specifically interested in automated analyses of global data. A little research led me to the WDI package. The ... [Read more...]

SPARQL with R in less than 5 minutes

January 23, 2013 | bryan

In this article we’ll get up and running on the Semantic Web in less than 5 minutes using SPARQL with R. We’ll begin with a brief introduction to the Semantic Web then cover some simple steps for downloading and analyzing government data via a SPARQL query with the SPARQL ... [Read more...]

R for Dummies – De Vries and Meys (2012)

December 22, 2012 | bryan

The for Dummies series has been around since 1991. (A bit of trivia, DOS for Dummies was the first title.) I’ve owned a few books in the series and have been adequately impressed with most of them, but when I learned there was an R for Dummies I was immediately ... [Read more...]

Helper Function Contest

December 2, 2012 | bryan

Just in time for the holidays, ProgrammingR is giving you the opportunity to win a gift for yourself or someone who loves R. And in the spirit of the holidays, you’ll also be giving back to the R community. In the last article I presented two helper functions I ... [Read more...]

R Helper Functions

September 25, 2012 | bryan

If you do a lot of R programming, you probably have a list of R helper functions set aside in a script that you include on R startup or at the top of your code. In some cases helper functions add capabilities that aren’t otherwise available. In other cases, ...
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Progress bars in R using winProgressBar

September 10, 2012 | bryan

Using progress bars in R scripts can provide valuable timing feedback during development and additional polish to final products. winProgressBar and setWinProgressBar are the primary functions for creating progress bars in R. Progress bars, and progress indicators in general, are relatively uncommon in R programming. This makes sense, as they ... [Read more...]

The Art of R Programming – Matloff (2011)

August 27, 2012 | bryan

It’s difficult to write a book on an entire programming language and keep it manageable and concise, but The Art of R Programming does it as well as any text I’ve seen. Matloff covers, in detail and among other things, R data structures, programming idioms, performance enhancements, interfaces ... [Read more...]

Animations in R

April 24, 2012 | bryan

Animated charts can be very helpful in illustrating concepts or discovering relationships, which makes them very helpful in teaching and exploratory research. Fortunately, creating animated graphs in R is fairly straightforward, once you have the right... [Read more...]

RStudio Development Environment

March 23, 2012 | bryan

Compared to many other languages of equal popularity, there are realtively few development environments for R. In fact, the total number of production ready R IDEs could probably be counted on one hand. That deficiency is a small price to pay to use R ... [Read more...]

Installing quantstrat from R-forge and source

January 10, 2012 | bryan

R is used extensively in the financial industry; many of my recent clients have been working in or developing products for the financial sector. Some common applications are to use R to analyze market data and evaluate quantitative trading strategies. ... [Read more...]

Subscriptions Feature Added

December 7, 2011 | bryan

You can now subscribe to almost any content on the ProgrammingR website, including the job listings. By subscribing, you will receive email updates when new jobs are listed or when other content types you are following are posted or updated. To subscri... [Read more...]

Bayesian Computation with R – Albert (2009)

October 4, 2011 | bryan

Title: Bayesian Computation with RAuthor(s): Jim AlbertPublisher/Date: Springer/2009Statistics level: High Programming level: Low Overall recommendation: Recommended Bayesian Computation with R focuses primarily on providing the reader with a basic understanding of Bayesian thinking and the relevant analytic tools included in R. It does not explore either of ... [Read more...]

Bayesian Computation with R – Albert (2009)

October 4, 2011 | bryan

Title: Bayesian Computation with RAuthor(s): Jim AlbertPublisher/Date: Springer/2009Statistics level: High Programming level: Low Overall recommendation: Recommended Bayesian Computation with R focuses primarily on providing the reader with a basic un... [Read more...]

Building Scoring and Ranking Systems in R

May 3, 2010 | bryan

This guest article was written by author and consultant Tristan Yates (see his bio below). It emphasizes R's data object manipulation and scoring capabilities via a detailed financial analysis example. Scoring and ranking systems are extremely valuabl... [Read more...]

Data Manipulation with R – Spector (2008)

April 30, 2010 | bryan

Title: Data Manipulation with RAuthor(s): Phil SpectorPublisher/Date: Springer/2008Statistics level: N/A Programming level: Intermediate Overall recommendation: Highly recommended If there is one book that every beginning R user coming from a programming background should have, it is Spector’s Data Manipulation with R. New R users with ... [Read more...]

Data Manipulation with R – Spector (2008)

April 30, 2010 | bryan

Title: Data Manipulation with RAuthor(s): Phil SpectorPublisher/Date: Springer/2008Statistics level: N/A Programming level: Intermediate Overall recommendation: Highly recommended If there is one book that every beginning R user coming from a program... [Read more...]

Webscraping using readLines and RCurl

April 14, 2009 | bryan

There is a massive amount of data available on the web. Some of it is in the form of precompiled, downloadable datasets which are easy to access. But the majority of online data exists as web content such as blogs, news stories and cooking recipes. ... [Read more...]

Helpful statistical references

April 7, 2009 | bryan

In a previous article I provided a list of R programming resources. As a complement to that post, I've compiled a list of statistically oriented websites that colleagues and I have found useful below. For the most part, these sites focus on statistic... [Read more...]
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