Author: Ajay Ohri

http://about.me/ajayohri

Shiny 0.3 released . New era for #rstats

Message from Winston Cheng of R Studio.

—-

We’ve released Shiny 0.3.0, and it’s available on CRAN now. Glimmer will be updated with the latest version of Shiny some time later today.
To update your installation of Shiny, run:
  install.packages(‘shiny’)
Highlights of the new version include:
* Some bugs were fixed in `reactivePrint()` and `reactiveText()`, so that they have slightly different rules for collecting the output. Please be aware that some changes to your apps’ text output is possible. The help pages for these functions explain the behavior.
* New `runGitHub()` function, which can run apps directly from a repository on GitHub
* New `runUrl()` function, which can run apps stored as zip or tar files on a remote web server.
* New `isolate()` function, which allows you to access reactive values (from input) without making the function dependent on them.
* Improved scheduling of evaluation of reactive functions, which should reduce the number of “extra” times a reactive function is called.

SAS gets awesome revenues

There are 2.87 billion reasons SAS is not going away anywhere in the Big Data Analytics space. Yes , thats the revenue figures declared by them-http://www.sas.com/news/preleases/2012financials.html

Of course I have always wondered how much they earn from SAS Federal LLC ( which is a subsidary that caters to the lucrative and not very competitive analytics in Intelligence) and their revenue breakdown by Product ( how much did they earn by Base SAS licenses versus how much they earned by Cyber Security  http://www.sas.com/industry/government/cybersecurity/index.html )

I wonder how many other analytics companies have even realized that they can help cut down the federal government costs ( or even have something close to this http://www.sas.com/industry/government/national-security/intelligence-management.html )

This year revenue breakdown was-

The Americas generated 47 percent of SAS’ total revenue; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) 41 percent; and Asia Pacific 12 percent.

but last year

The Americas accounted for 46 percent of total revenue; Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) 42 percent; and Asia Pacific 12 percent

So Americas revenue grew faster than Europe revenues!Okay

Continue reading “SAS gets awesome revenues”

Data Visualization for R packages at Github #rstats

I noticed this article sometime back by the most excellent hacker, John Myles White ( author Machine learning for Hackers)

http://www.johnmyleswhite.com/notebook/2012/08/12/the-social-dynamics-of-the-r-core-team/

Professor John Fox, whom we have interviewed here as the creator of R Commander, talked on this at  User 2008 http://www.statistik.uni-dortmund.de/useR-2008/slides/Fox.pdf

I also noticed that R Project is stuck on SVN ( yes or no??, comment please) while some part of the rest of the World has moved on to Git. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_%28software%29

Is Git really that good compared to SVN http://stackoverflow.com/questions/871/why-is-git-better-than-subversion

Maybe, I think with 5000 packages and more , R -project needs to have more presence on Github and atleast consider Git for the distributed and international project R is becoming.

Continue reading “Data Visualization for R packages at Github #rstats”

How to be a Happy Hacker

I write on and off on hackers (see http://bit.ly/VWxSvP) and even some poetry on them (http://bit.ly/11RznQl) . During meetups, conferences, online discussions I run into them, I have interviewed them , and I have trained some of them (in analytics). Based on this decade long experience of observing hackers, and two decade long experience of hanging out with them- some thoughts on making you a better hacker, and a happier hacker even if you are a hacker activist or a hacker in enterprise software.

1) Everybody can be a hacker, but you need to know the basic attitude first.  Not every Python or Java coder is a hacker. Coding is not hacking. More details here- https://decisionstats.com/2012/02/12/how-to-learn-to-be-a-hacker-easily/

2) Use tools like Coursera, Udacity, Codeacdemy to learn new languages. Even if you dont have the natural gift for memorizing syntax, some of it helps. (I forget syntax quite often. I google)

3) Learn tools like Metasploit if you want to learn the lucrative and romantic art of exploits hacking (http://www.offensive-security.com/metasploit-unleashed/Main_Page). The demand for information security is going to be huge. hackers with jobs are happy hackers.

4) Develop a serious downtime hobby.

Lets face it- your body was not designed to sit in front of a computer for 8 hours. But being a hacker will mean that commitment and maybe more.

Continue reading “How to be a Happy Hacker”

Funny Stuff on Book Resellers and Dynamic Pricing at Amazon

I have been keeping an eye on the pricing figure of R for Business Analytics at Amazon.com and have watched it fluctuate between 49$ to 59$ while it is currently at 50$. (Incidentally- Per Capita GDP of India is 3700$ per year or ~$10 per day)

My point is

  1. why should a used book reseller offer to sell the same book at a HIGHER price,
  2. while a new book reseller offers to sell the same book that Amazon is selling (in stock) at a higher price.
  3. On top of that, these resellers have hundreds of thousands of ratings from delighted book buyers (of other books) who were very happy at buying the same book (used or new) at higher prices including upto twice the price.

Funny Stuff , huh!

Continue reading “Funny Stuff on Book Resellers and Dynamic Pricing at Amazon”

Eric Siegel’s Book

Message from Founder of Predictive Analytics Conference, Eric Siegel whom we have interviewed here –

To drive early orders for my about-to-launch book, “Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die” (published by Wiley Feb 18), we’re providing this offer:

PREORDER NOW ($15 on Amazon, currently) and receive:

1) FREE ACCESS to the first of four modules of my online training program, “Predictive Analytics Applied”

2) A 40% DISCOUNT CODE off the full online training ($495), or its in-person version, “Predictive Analytics for Business, Marketing and Web” ($1,495 – April 25-26 in NYC)

 

DETAILS ON THIS OFFER: http://www.pawcon.com/blog/?p=855

– – – – – – – – – – – –

5 REASONS THIS BOOK MATTERS TO EXPERTS: http://www.pawcon.com/patimes/january13

FULL PREFACE: http://www.pawcon.com/patimes/december12

39 COLLEAGUES WHO LOVED THIS BOOK: http://www.pawcon.com/book/praise.php

MORE INFO: http://www.thepredictionbook.com

– – – – – – – – – – – –

“Exciting and engaging – reads like a thriller!”
– Marianna Dizik, Statistician, Google

In this rich, entertaining primer, former Columbia University professor and Predictive Analytics World founder Eric Siegel reveals the power and perils of prediction.

“What Nate Silver did for poker and politics, this does for everything else. A broad, well-written book easily accessible to non-nerd readers.”

—David Leinweber, author, Nerds on Wall Street: & Math, Machines and Wired Markets

“This book is an operating manual for 21st century life. Drawing predictions from big data is at the heart of nearly everything, whether it’s in science, business, finance, sports, or politics. And Eric Siegel is the ideal guide.”

—Stephen Baker, author, The Numerati and Final Jeopardy: Man vs Machine and the Quest to Know Everything

With a foreword from Thomas H. Davenport, coauthor of Competing on Analytics.

—

Blog Disclaimer-Eric is founder of PAW Conferences , which is a Blog Sponsor here.

 

Ajay uses this

Ajay Ohri-

  Writer, Fighter, Blogger,Slogger

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Who are you, and what do you do?

I’m Ajay Ohri , I’m a  writer.
I write on my own blog on analytics at Decisionstats.com . I am focused on actionable analytics which helps users.

I am also interested in interface design for statistical software, cloud computing interfaces, unorthodox cryptography , and hacker activism.

I also write books. And poetry.

Recently I have been working in R a lot.

What hardware do you use?

I use a Dell  N5010 ,i5 CPU , with Dual Cores (2.67 Hz) , with 4 gb RAM (and with a Virtual Machine)

I also use a Samsung 10 Galaxy Tab 2 tablet.

For offline data storage -I use an Ipad classic  (80 gb) , Sandisk USB  (16gb) and a Nokia Phone.

This is when I am not on an Azure, Google Compute or AWS.

And what software?

I use Chrome (Version 24.0.1312.52 m) and Firefox (18.0) mostly. But sometimes like Sea Monkey. For Cloud Computing 🙂

Windows 7 Home Edition /(VM Ware Player- Ubuntu 12). Android  4.X works for my tablet.

Google Docs and Libre Office  for Documents . WordPress for Blogging.

Lyx 2.0 for Writing Books ( Latex).

R (2.X) for Coding mostly, though I sometimes play on Codeacademy on learning some JS, CSS.

What would be your dream setup?

A massive cloud computer  >60 gb RAM, <= 8 cores with a very easy to use interface  that I can use from  my Android tablet without getting into developer/ rooting issues.

Attribution-

http://usesthis.com/