Month: March 2008

Baby Boy

My sleepy son, my sleeping child

So beautiful and yet so fragile

Breath flows like a breeze

In your dreams you smile

 

While I watch awestruck

Cant believe this stroke of luck

Like a lovely angel on the earth

Can’t help staring at you for a while

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All neatly dressed all scrubbed and cleaned

Adequately diaperized and hair all preened

Oh so handsome like a miniature toy

Sleeps so smugly my baby boy

 

The sleepless nights and missed work

For you it is all worthwhile

Only fathers can share this joy.

Rocking to sleep the baby boy.

 

 

Regret

Regret

 

 

I am thinking

Of the pain

You feel for the instant

When the bullet hits your brain

 

Thinking despite

Medicines and drugs that dull

The self destructive tendencies

Embedded in my skull

 

Missed opportunities

And hard to miss betrayals

Of erstwhile friends, foes

Maligned my portrayal

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The potential I had

As a young boy of twenty

Accumulates painful negativity

At a not so young thirty

 

I could have been, Should have been,

Would have been someone

Had not my impulses

Imploded in front of everyone

 

And now regret haunts

The crevices of my brain

Till I pop one more pill

Dull it all again

 

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Learning R Easily :Two GUI's

Both Rattle and R Commander are very good GUI’s (graphical user interface) for R, and considerably easier for a beginner than the command line console ( but I am more partial to RCmdr for normal statistical analysis while Rattle seemed to have better Data Mining Interfaces and functionality).

Here is a snapshot for both of them.

Installing them both is a breeze as you set a CRAN Mirror from Normal R Console and install package from list of package names . R has hundreds of packages (All free!!) and you can thus install specific packages to your need and usage.The software R automatically downloads and installs them.

rcommdr.GIF..

Installling both these GUI will ensure you cut down the time to learn commands as you can first click and try and learn the syntax that is auto generated side by side.

rattle.GIF

Learning R Easily :Two GUI’s

Both Rattle and R Commander are very good GUI’s (graphical user interface) for R, and considerably easier for a beginner than the command line console ( but I am more partial to RCmdr for normal statistical analysis while Rattle seemed to have better Data Mining Interfaces and functionality).

Here is a snapshot for both of them.

Installing them both is a breeze as you set a CRAN Mirror from Normal R Console and install package from list of package names . R has hundreds of packages (All free!!) and you can thus install specific packages to your need and usage.The software R automatically downloads and installs them.

rcommdr.GIF..

Installling both these GUI will ensure you cut down the time to learn commands as you can first click and try and learn the syntax that is auto generated side by side.

rattle.GIF

Choosing GUI for R :Simplify

While trolling through R literature, came across some good GUI ‘s for R. I am currently experimenting with two of them .

Out of these I can recommend R Commander http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/jfox/Misc/Rcmdr/ 

Not only is the GUI quite neat and clean, the interface actually prints out R code for you. so its a great help if you are learning R and want to learn and do projects at the same time. I imported a dataset of 200,000 rows and while it did take 3-5 secs longer than SAS or SPSS would have taken —Its very very good for a free STATS package. The graphics are also quite good , and I currently evaluating the modeling and scoring capabilities as well .

The second GUI is Rattle. http://rattle.togaware.com/radownload.html 

It is slightly less easy to install than R Commander which automatically downloads the dependencies in terms of packages and its also bigger (nearly 15 mb) for a dependency named RGtk2.

Coming up , a side by side comparison of these two GUI’s in terms of modeling and a search for additional GUIs.

Speaking of search, there  is a FireFox Add on for searching R specific material.

Learning R for SAS and SPSS Users

So you decided to cut down on your Statistical software expenses and decided to get R.

but the problem is you know SAS /SPSS and you need to learn R fast enough to justify switching over …….

the ideal book for you is  http://oit.utk.edu/scc/RforSAS&SPSSusers.pdf

Thanks to the guys who pointed me here. Its a really easy book, you have the SAS Syntax, the corresponding SPSS Syntax and the R Syntax.

 That’s useful for learners in R who got projects to execute, and need to learn either SPSS or R or even switch from SPSS to SAS.