Blog Archives

Innovation Will Never Be At The Push Of A Button

May 17, 2013
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@randyzwitch @benjamingaines @usujason I am envisioning the data science equivalent of an autonomous vehicle pileup. — Todd Belcher (@toddmetrics) May 16, 2013   Recently, I’ve been getting my blood pressure up reading (marketing) articles about “big data” and “data science”.  What saddens me about the whole discussion is that there is the underlying premise that

Innovation Will Never...

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Instructions for Installing & Using R on Amazon EC2

April 8, 2013
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If you’re an R user, you’ve surely heard all the hype around ‘big data’ and how R is commonly used to analyze these volumes of data. One thing that’s often missing from the discussion is HOW to work around issues using big data and R, specifically how to deal with the fact that R stores

Instructions for Installing...

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Automated Re-Install of Packages for R 3.0

April 3, 2013
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With the big release of R 3.0 today comes an unfortunate side effect of needing to re-install all of your packages. Luckily, R provides a pretty easy method of getting all of your packages into a list for automated re-install.  Here’s how to do it for OSX users with a default install to the Library:

Automated Re-Install of...

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The Fun of Error Trapping: R Package Edition

February 25, 2013
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For the last month or so I’ve been working on an R package to make accessing the Adobe (Omniture) Digital Marketing Suite Reporting API easier.  As part of this development effort, I’m at the point where I’m intentionally introducing errors into my function inputs, trying to guess some of the ways useRs might incorrectly input

The Fun of...

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(not provided): Using R and the Google Analytics API

January 11, 2013
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(not provided): Using R and the Google Analytics API

For power users of Google Analytics, there is a heavy dose of spreadsheet work that accompanies any decent analysis.  But even with Excel in tow, it’s often difficult to get the data just right without resorting to formula hacks and manual table formatting.  This is where the Google Analytics API and R can come very

(not provided): Using...

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Video: SQL queries in R using sqldf package

December 17, 2012
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This video covers how to run SQL queries using the ‘sqldf’ package within R. This sqldf tutorial was part of a Keystone Solutions podcast discussion about data science and what skills beginning analysts should be learning to improve their skill set. The example files from this tutorial can be downloaded from this link: Example Data

Video: SQL...

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Video: Overlay Histogram in R (normal, density, another series)

November 9, 2012
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This video explains how to overlay histogram plots in R for 3 common cases: overlaying a histogram with a normal curve, overlaying a histogram with a density curve, and overlaying a histogram with a second data series plotted on a … Continue reading

Video: Overlay Histogram in R (normal, density, another series) is an article from

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Video: R, RStudio, Rcmdr & rattle

September 7, 2012
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I did a screencast for my co-workers to show how to get started with R, specifically what a base installation of R looks like, then showing how to improve your workflow using RStudio, Rcmdr or rattle.  The examples are somewhat … Continue reading

Video: R, RStudio, Rcmdr & rattle is an article from randyzwitch.com, a...

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Getting Started Using R, Part 1: RStudio

August 4, 2012
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Getting Started Using R, Part 1:  RStudio

Despite my preference for SAS over R, there are some add-ons to “basic” R that I’ve found that have made my learning process way easier.  While I’m still in my infancy in learning R, I feel like once I found … Continue reading

Getting Started Using R, Part 1: RStudio is an article from randyzwitch.com,...

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Learning R has really made me appreciate SAS

July 25, 2012
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For the past 18 months, it seems like all I’ve heard about in the digital marketing industry is “big data”, and with that, mentions of using Hadoop and R to solve these sorts of problems.  Why are these tools the … Continue reading

Learning R has really made me appreciate SAS is an article from randyzwitch.com,...

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