Over at Cerebral Mastication, JD Long tells a characteristically entertaining and informative story about how he uses R to run stochastic simulations of insurance portfolios and reinsurance treaties. A typical job involves 10,000 simulations, and when each estimate takes over 20 seconds you're talking some serious time to get the job done. ... [Read more...]

In scientific discovery, the first three paradigms were experimental, theoretical and (more recently) computational science. A new book of essays published by Microsoft (and available for free download -- kudos, MS!) argues that a fourth paradigm of scientific discovery is at hand: the analysis of massive data sets. The book ... [Read more...]