I am excited to announce vtreat is now available for Python on PyPi, in addition for R on CRAN. vtreat is: A data.frame processor/conditioner that prepares real-world data for predictive modeling in a statistically sound manner. vtreat prepares variables so that data has fewer exceptional cases, making it ...

Fred Viole shared a great “data only” R solution to the forecasting tides problem. The methodology comes from a finance perspective, and has some great associated notes and articles. This gives me a chance to comment on the odd relation between prediction and profit in finance. If there really was ...

In 1876 A. Légé & Co., 20 Cross Street, Hatton Gardens, London completed the first “tide calculating machine” for William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) (ref). Thomson’s (Lord Kelvin) First Tide Predicting Machine, 1876 The results were plotted on the paper cylinders, and one literally “turned the crank” to perform the calculations. The ...

I was recently asked if Win-Vector LLC would move the R wrapr package from a GPL-3 license to an LGPL license. In the end I decided to move wrapr distribution to a “GPL-2 | GPL-3” license. This means the package is now available under both GPL-2 and GPL-3 licensing, allowing the ...

We, the community of Manning R and data science authors, have talked Manning into offering a catalog-wide 40% discount on all books. Please take a look at some great deals on some great technical books here: http://mng.bz/adRj !

There is interest in converting relational query languages (that work both over SQL databases and on local data) into data.table commands, to take advantage of data.table‘s superior performance. Obviously if one wants to use data.table it is best to learn data.table. But if we want ...

Nina and I have been sending out drafts of our book Practical Data Science with R 2nd Edition for technical review. A few of the reviews came back from reviewers that described themselves with variations of: Senior Business Analyst for COMPANYNAME. I have been involved in presenting graphs of data ...

Our publisher, Manning, is running a Memorial Day sale this weekend (May 24-27, 2019), with a new offer every day. Fri: Half off all eBooks Sat: Half off all MEAPs Sun: Half off all pBooks and liveVideos Mon: Half off everything The discount code is: wm052419au. Many great opportunities to ...

We have just released two new free video lectures on vectors from a programmer’s point of view. I am experimenting with what ideas do programmers find interesting about vectors, what concepts do they consider safe starting points, and how to condense and present the material. Please check the lectures ...

In this note we share a quick study timing how long it takes to perform some simple data manipulation tasks with R data.frames. We are interested in the time needed to select a column, alter a column, or select a row. Knowing what is fast and what is slow ...