# Yes, you read that correctly and no Quandl (http://www.quandl.com/) did not pay me anything.# Quandl is a new database management tool which seeks to become the place to find datasets.  They boast of having over 5x10^6 data sets available t...

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Frequently I need to recode a date column to quarters. For example, at Excelsior College we have continuous enrollment so we report new enrollments per quarter. To complicate things a bit, our fiscal year starts in July so that July, August, and September represent the first quarter, January, February, and March are actually the third quarter. But sometimes...

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Paul Teetor, who is doing yeoman’s duty as one of the organizers of the Chicago R User Group (CRUG), asked recently if I would do a short presentation about a “favorite package”.  I picked xlsx, one of the many packages that provides a bridge between spreadsheets and R.  Here are the slides from my presentation

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I already mentioned R for dummies a while ago on the ‘Og and never got around to read it from cover to back. Now that I am reduced to a dummy state with too much free time!, I can produce a full review of the book. R for dummies was written by two Belgian statistics

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First, I would like to welcome all of you reading this via R-Bloggers. I have been a user of this superb resource for years and I'm proud that I now have the opportunity to contribute!In The Financial Crisis on Tape Part I I demonst...

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We are pleased to announce that Revolution R Enterprise Release 6.2 is available to new subscribers today. This new software release from Revolution Analytics includes a number of key new features: Support for open source R 2.15.3, the latest stable release of R. Since Release 2.14.2, the R Project has added 89 new features, 11 performance enhancements and 139...

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I managed to catch David Spiegelhalter’s Tails You Win on BBC iplayer last week. I missed it the first time round, only for my parents on my last visit home to tell me about a Statistician jumping out of a … Continue reading →

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I’m a big fan of open-source software for research. For example, R-statistics, Qgis, and Grass GIS are awesome programs. R can do any statistical tests and numerical modeling you can imagine; if there’s not a built-in function you can write … Continue reading →

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Our 5th Cologne R user group meeting was the best attended meeting so far, with 20 members finding their way to the Institute of Sociology for two talks by Diego de Castillo on shiny and Stephan Holtmeier on cluster analysis, followed by beer and schnitzel at the Lux, a gastropub nearby.

Shiny

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not a survey, not even remotely current, the society of actuaries' medical large claims experience study (mlces) might be the best private health insurance claims data available to the public.  this data should be used to calibrate other data sets...

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