Accelerating R: RStudio and the new R Consortium

RStudio Blog

To paraphrase Yogi Berra, “Predicting is hard, especially about the future”. In 1993, when Ross Ihaka and Robert Gentleman first started working on R, who would have predicted that it would be used by millions in a world that increasingly rewards data literacy? It’s impossible to know where R will go in the next 20 years, but at RStudio we’re working hard to make sure the future is bright.

Today, we’re excited to announce our participation in the R Consortium, a new 501(c)6 nonprofit organization. The R Consortium is a collaboration between the R Foundation, RStudio, Microsoft, TIBCO, Google, Oracle, HP and others. It’s chartered to fund and inspire ideas that will enable R to become an even better platform for science, research, and industry. The R Consortium complements the R Foundation by providing a convenient funding vehicle for the many commercial beneficiaries of R to give back to the community, and…

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Trolling Behavior on StackOverflow

I have asked a question on Stack Overflow based on discussions between myself and a few others members of Delhi Data Science groups

http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/296887/447537

How do we report trolling behavior, bullying or harassment in terms of constant and targeted down voting?

I have sometimes noticed trolling behavior by a group of people, they are fairly highly ranked in terms of reputation, but have abysmal manners in terms of snark, group down-voting as well as targeted down-voting.

How do i report such behavior?

Does Stack Overflow have any remedy for small and new users targeted by high reputation users ?

a lovely tool for Data Explorer in Stack Overflow

http://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/25355/have-we-met

 

Have we met?

Where have I ‘met’ another user? (Reminder, Jon Skeet’s user id is 22656 🙂 May throw up some false positives because of @Name matches.
- Have we met?
-- Where have I 'met' another user? (Reminder, Jon Skeet's user id is 22656 🙂 May throw up some false positives because of @Name matches.

declare @MyId int = ##MyId##;
declare @TheirId int = ##TheirId##;

declare @LikeMyName nvarchar(40)
select @LikeMyName = '%' + DisplayName + '%' from Users where Id = @MyId

declare @TheirName nvarchar(40)
declare @LikeTheirName nvarchar(40)
select @TheirName = DisplayName from Users where Id = @TheirId
select @LikeTheirName = '%' + @TheirName + '%'

-- Question/Answer meetings
  select
   Questions.Id as [Post Link],  
    case
      when Questions.OwnerUserId = @TheirId then @TheirName + '''s question, my answer'
    else 'My question, ' + @TheirName + '''s answer'
    end as [What]
  from Posts as Questions
  inner join Posts as Answers
   on Questions.Id = Answers.ParentId
  where Answers.PostTypeId = 2 and Questions.PostTypeId = 1
   and ((Questions.OwnerUserId = @TheirId and Answers.OwnerUserId = @MyId )
     or (Questions.OwnerUserid = @MyId and Answers.OwnerUserId = @TheirId ))
union
  -- Comments on owned posts
  select Posts.Id as [Post Link],
    case
      when Posts.PostTypeId = 1 and Posts.OwnerUserId = @TheirId then @TheirName + '''s question, my comment'
      when Posts.PostTypeId = 1 and Posts.OwnerUserId = @MyId then 'My question, ' + @TheirName + '''s comment'
      when Posts.PostTypeId = 2 and Posts.OwnerUserId = @TheirId then @TheirName + '''s answer, my comment'
      when Posts.PostTypeId = 2 and Posts.OwnerUserId = @MyId then 'My answer, ' + @TheirName + '''s comment'
    end as [What]  
  from Posts
  inner join Comments
    on Posts.Id = Comments.PostId
  where ((Posts.OwnerUserId = @TheirId and Comments.UserId = @MyId )
     or (Posts.OwnerUserid = @MyId and Comments.UserId = @TheirId ))

union
 -- @comments on posts
  select Posts.Id as [Post Link],
    case
      when UserId = @TheirId then @TheirName + '''s reply to my comment'
      when UserId = @MyId then 'My reply to ' + @TheirName + '''s comment'
    end as [What]  
  from Comments
    inner join Posts on Comments.PostId = Posts.Id
  where ((UserId = @TheirId and Text like @LikeMyName )
     or (UserId = @MyId and Text like @LikeTheirName))

order by [Post Link]

Interesting IBM event at Cercles Delhi

I was there on June 10 to attend the hands-on-session cum event for IBM’s PaaS offering IBM Bluemix. The event took place at http://cercles.co.in/ which is a relatively new startup coworking space in Hauz Khas Village Delhi. Since this was just 5 minute walk from where I currently live, I attended along with an intern and a colleague of my new training company http://decisionstats.org The event was nicely organized, the infrastructure was good, the speakers were quite awesome. To read what really happened you can see the summary at the clouddelhi hashtag.

One thing I noticed R is not really given as much attention in Bluemix. I particularly found IBM Watson APIs (which are RESTful) to be a great case for #rstats packages .

Bluemix has a nice interface, and they are offering 30 day free which is quite low compared to 1 yr of AWS. IBM is focussed on hybrid cloud for enterprises and opportunities for people like us depend on becoming ISV (Independent Software Vendors) or Partners in the IBM ecosystem https://twitter.com/hashtag/CloudDelhi?src=hash

Fortunately I didnt have to speak. I liked Cercles well enough to book a seat for my startup  for the next month something which I have not done so despite considering two-three other co-working hubs in the past in Delhi-Gurgaon.

An additional thing was Woman in Tech as a theme. I found some of the reactions interesting there. Perhaps Governments need to adopt the Woman in Tech theme, but they seem ignorant and uninformed as corporations try to tweak their policies to gain and retain talent, than advise policy makers to help create a better ecosystem. CG_ch8dWoAAsTmR