Project R

[SoCo KungFu]

Any of you computer savvy types proficient in R? I learned stat computation using a GUI (GraphPad Prism). Prism is nice, it makes stuff for you as you run tests. But its like paint by numbers compared to a command interface like R. Been trying to pick it up, particularly for its modelling capabilities, but my brain doesn't like computer logic. Could use some pointers, particularly with looping and subsetting. I get the concept, but knowing what little pieces I need to do what in the program is getting me.

[wenshu]

Learn C. Nearly all modern languages are based on C and from the perfunctory reading of background and examples I did before replying, the syntax of R looks pretty familiar. Also from the wiki page the internals of S (on which R is based) were rewritten in C and people often drop down into C for more computationally intensive implementations.

I would recommend this: http://c.learncodethehardway.org/book/

It's available free online and is by far the best beginner programming text I've ever used. I still reference it today; wish I had known about it when I started.

It will walk you through typing, control structures and statements (if/else, for/while loops, switch statements), arrays, pointers, functions, structs, etc with clear, specific examples that you run using nothing but a compiler and a text editor which is helpful for learning how to debug when things go wrong, which is pretty much everything all the time.

If you have specific questions or problems it's been answered on Stack Overflow.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r

If it's too general and/or basic for the above, holla atcha boy

[Syn7]

I learned Python with that site. It's pretty sweet. I'm not very good at it, but with references I can get what I need done.

[SoCo KungFu]

Cool man, thanks for the link

[wenshu]

Hey SoCo - This popped up on Hacker News, if you're not already using it you probably should.

http://www.rstudio.com/

[SoCo KungFu]

Hey SoCo - This popped up on Hacker News, if you're not already using it you probably should.

http://www.rstudio.com/

I have been. Its nice for work I'm either playing with, or know really well. And it has some nice display organization and such. I like that it provides a bit of point and click to objects that you've defined with values, so you can readily see what you're working with without having to command call it up. Speeds things up, there's plenty of other stuff to be typing to be messing around with ls() and view("") every 30 seconds. But when I'm flipping through multiple windows trying to google code and figure something out based on other published stuff, I tend to use base R. Just takes up less screen space and I can have multiple windows visible at once.

[wenshu]

But when I'm flipping through multiple windows trying to google code and figure something out based on other published stuff, I tend to use base R. Just takes up less screen space and I can have multiple windows visible at once.

How do you export your projects from the console?

Eventually project complexity will necessitate the use of an IDE in place of the command line interpreter.

Here's another one that is a plugin for Eclipse

http://www.walware.de/goto/statet

(Eclipse is a very popular among Java developers, not such a fan myself but it's pretty much the only choice at the moment for Android dev)

I can empathize with your display real estate dilemma. At work I have two 27 inch displays, one for my IDE/current project and one for google/stackover flow browser windows, simulators/VMs, design specs, logs or even another project all together.

[SoCo KungFu]

How do you export your projects from the console?

Eventually project complexity will necessitate the use of an IDE in place of the command line interpreter.

Here's another one that is a plugin for Eclipse

http://www.walware.de/goto/statet

(Eclipse is a very popular among Java developers, not such a fan myself but it's pretty much the only choice at the moment for Android dev)

I can empathize with your display real estate dilemma. At work I have two 27 inch displays, one for my IDE/current project and one for google/stackover flow browser windows, simulators/VMs, design specs, logs or even another project all together.

Honestly, I haven't really gotten to a point with R where that's been a necessity. I still have til December on my Prism license so any "real" work between now and then gets done on that, since all I need at the moment is statistical functions anyways and graphing.

I've read there's a package though that commands sink() and savehistory() and exports to a word doc. I think the command is savehistory(). One saves output, the other the command history. Not sure the name of the package though. Like I said though I'm still trying to mess with just learning the language and how to set up larger processes with iterations and branching function and such. Right now, R is like my new super new smartphonecomputerinone thingy. I'm still trying to figure out where all I can fit it into my life.

Listening to all the people raving about it though, I should be able to write up something to have it program my stove to cook me bacon every time I hit space bar, and calculate the probability that it will be burnt...