If you are a runner yourself, you are certainly aware of how important preparation is before a race. For the preparation for my first marathon, I used to rely on a training plan. This running plan was great, but an important piece of information was missing: the running pace. Most...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more

R is nothing more than a programming language. At the time of writing, this language is (one of) the leading program in statistics, although not the only programming language used by statisticians. [Related Article: Image Compression In 10 Lines of R Code] In order to use R, we need two things:...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more

If you have the chance to work with an experienced programmer, you may be amazed by how fast she can write code. In this article, I share some tips and shortcuts you can use in RStudio and R Markdown to speed up the writing of your code. [Related Article: Image...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more

Summary: This blog examines a loading pattern seen often with government-generated, web-accessible data. The data comprise millions of records across multiple text or csv files, generally demarcated by time. The files may present different, but overlapping, attributes, while much of the data has a character representation, posing the challenge of...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more

Why pick one when you can use both at the same time? R is primarily used for statistical analysis, while Python provides a more general approach to data science. R and Python are object-oriented towards data science for programming language. Learning both is an ideal solution. Python is a common-purpose...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more

Unlike other programs, only fundamental functionalities come by default with R. You will thus often need to install some “extensions” to perform the analyses you want. These extensions which are are collections of functions and datasets developed and published by R users are called packages. They extend existing base R functionalities...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more

R is the second most sought after language in data science behind Python, so gaining mastery of R is a prerequisite to a thriving career in the field. Whether you’re an experienced developer or a newbie considering a career move, here are some excellent resources so you can get started...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more

We recently commented on excess package dependencies as representing risk in the R package ecosystem. The question remains: how much risk? Is low dependency a mere talisman, or is there evidence it is a good practice (or at least correlates with other good practices)? [Related Article: Data-Driven Exploration of the R User Community Worldwide]...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more

Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is a powerful Machine Learning tool. As an unsupervised learning technique, it excels in dimension reduction and feature extraction However, do you know we can use PCA to compress images? In this post, I’ll walk through the process and explain how PCA can compress images in...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more

At this point, most of us know the basics of using and deploying R—maybe you took a class on it, maybe you participated in a hackathon. That’s all important (and we have tracks for getting started with Python if you’re not there yet), but once you have those baseline skills,...<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --> Read more