In this post I present an example of using Sweave to prepare a PDF of formatted multiple choice questions.More broadly the example shows how to use Sweave to incorporate elements of a databaseinto a formatted LaTeX document.It aims to be useful to any...
In this post I present an example of using Sweave to prepare a PDF of formatted multiple choice questions. More broadly the example shows how to use Sweave to incorporate elements of a database into a formatted LaTeX document. It aims to be useful to anyone wanting to learn more about the almost magical powers of make, Sweave,...
Recently I found myself needing to calculate the distance between a large number of longitude and latitude locations. As it turns out, because the earth is a three-dimensional object, you cannot simply pretend that you are in Flatland, albeit some … Continue reading →
Each year I have the pleasure (actually it’s quite fun) of teaching R programming to first year mathematics and statistics students. The vast majority of these students have no experience of programming, yet think they are good with computers because they use facebook! The class has around 100 students, and there are eight practicals. In 
One of the current best tools in the machine learning toolbox is the 1930s statistical technique called logistic regression. We explain how to add professional quality logistic regression to your analytic repertoire and describe a bit beyond that. A statistical analyst working on data tends to deliberately start simple move cautiously to more complicated methods. Related posts:
InfoChimps.com is mainly known as a clearinghouse for finding large data sets, for free or for sale. But they have also released (in beta, at least) an API that lets you find some pretty useful information on-demand. Normally, you'd have you use RESTful calls to access the API, but now Drew Conway has created an R package (and released...
I recently got very close to the floating point trap, again, so here is a little tribute with some small examples!
I have finally taken the plunge and created my first R package! As frequent readers will know, I often sing the praises of infochimps, a startup out of Austin, TX attempting to be the world’s data clearinghouse. While infochimps is an excellent resource for data sets, they also provide their own set excellent data
A quick reminder that two competitions based around data analysis, both very suited to R, are currently underway. First, there's still plenty of time to enter the competition to predict popular R packages, announced by the The Dataists and hosted at Kaggle. According to organizer Drew Conway, the competition has already received 114 entries from 21 teams. But with...
A few months ago I showed you how to syntax-highlight R code using Github Gists for displaying R code on your blog or other online medium. The idea's really simple if you use blogger - head over to gist.github.com, paste in your R code, create a public "gist", hit "embed", then copy the javascript onto your blog. However, if...
Zero Inflated Models and Generalized Linear Mixed Models with R.
Zuur, Saveliev, Ieno (2012).
