Author: Ajay Ohri

http://about.me/ajayohri

R , Ubuntu, RCmdr Updates

Some nice updates for R followers-

1) Rather than have an Icon for R – There is a seperate icon for RCmdr in Ubuntu Karmic Koala – Thus the default screen on opening is R Cmdr.

2) REvolution Computing has managed a coup with their bundling of their libraries with the R Distribution in Ubuntu Karmic Koala( see screenshot). We however still are waiting for who gets the credit for that ( Daneese Cooper or the long suffering Mr Smith)

Screenshot

 

3)Karmic Koala offers 2 GB free space  for storing data in the cloud for every user and 50 GB at 10$ a month. This helps with your storage costs. Data is protected thanks to an oauth login id and machine specific tie-in.

4) RCmdr has a great new plugin for DOE (Design off Experiments) students. DOE is a powerful and under utilized technique especially in Web Analytics. This is promising given that Dr John Fox ( whom we interviewed on this website) has going on ahead and seems clearly to have established RCmdr as the introductory GUI for beginners to R.

(see screenshot 2 below)

5) The Karmic Koala is very easy to install and very intuitive to use- Don’t want to give up your Windows ( well just install a dual boot which takes less than 1 hour on a fast internet connection or 15 minutes if you have a DVD)

 

Screenshot-1

6) What are other Statistics softwares doing? If they are not too keen on helping Microsoft get more sales ( especially student OS licenses) why don’t they offer the Ubuntu version free for students ( and besides once and for all put to rest the open source credential controversy)

 

Google Wave

Finally I got a Google Wave. It is nice. So nice I would rather write a Wave than write email.

Now if only the rest of my Gang was on it too- and if I could only create a Blog post on WordPress.com using a Wave.

See here-

Screenshot

Decisionstats Interview at Big Data Summit, AsterData

 

For a change, I got interviewed at Big Data Summit, sponsored by Aster Data. With a special thanks to Tasso , Steve Wooledge and his team, and the lovely Michelle from http://www.zagcommunications.com

Note this is just the raw unedited footage so it can be pretty repetitive, so if you want the final interview it should take some time. Anyways I managed to not make a complete mess of it. Have a look.

YouSendIt- Sending large files securely

Here is a useful site for sending large files on the Internet if you lack a personal FTP server and it comes with a password protected option as well. Plus it is free for 100 MB..

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Video on Big Data

A terrific video on challenges of handling Big Data by ComScore

comScore is the global source of digital market intelligence and the most preferred measurement service. Clients turn to comScore for objective, accurate and reliable insights into consumers’ online behavior and for details into their demographic characteristics, attitudes, lifestyles and offline activities.

http://www.asterdata.com/customers/comscore-video.php

It is a good educational video (simple and short) for people wanting to understand what exactly does SQL and MapReduce integration helps in analytics. Basically with bigger data, ease of querying is as important if not more as most descriptive statistics consists of summarization and slicing and dicing appropriate cuts of data. When it comes to predictive analytics or hypothesis testing the traditional statistics requires tweaking of their assumptions including continuity corrections and confidence intervals can be trickier if not handled properly.

I met the chaps at Com Score at Big Data Summit and they seemed to have a tremendous amount of data- literally measuring the whole internet everyday.

Student Statement: The Right to Research

An initiative by Student Government at U Tenn ( I am a slight pat of Student govt but not of the following ———as  a member of the University of Tennessee Technology, Fee Advisory Board. My current role involves increasing funding for bears like koala 😉  )

Scholarly knowledge is part of the common wealth of humanity.

Unfortunately, not everyone has access to the scholarly literature, despite advances in communications technology.  The high cost of academic journals restricts access to knowledge; in some fields, prices can reach $20,000 for a single journal subscription1 or $30 for an individual article.2 Despite these high prices, authors of scholarly articles are not paid for their work. The profits from these publications go solely to the publishers of the journals.  A vast amount of research is funded from public sources – yet taxpayers are locked out by the cost of access.

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I suppose companies like SAS Institute ( with a nice SAS Publishing arm- I got a SAS Enterprise Guide book for predictive analytics from them) Aster Data ( which needs all the BIG DATA programmers and researchers including students), SPSS ( with IBM’s backing and pedigree of R and D) , and SAP (with University Network) and even the dropout* founded Oracle

can help by sponsoring journal articles so as to

1) Increase pool of developers who remain loyal to that platform for life ( similar to companies offering student credit cards)

2) Increase visibility as a low cost advertising medium.

 

( *Amazing- Google, Microsoft, Oracle, Trilogy, Aster (partly) , JMP (partly) it seems to get really really rich- one has to go to Grad School, make a tech company and drop out.

Maybe I do a research paper on this hypothesis using some kind of ANOVA, T tests)

If you believe students have Right to Research and you can help by stepping in to help both article authors and students come closer AND makes good sense for your business

– HONK YOUR HORN.

A website for God

Here is a website I built in less than 15 minutes for my fellow Bible Study and Church members. I am hoping to introduce the concepts of search engine optimization and social media to the people who have prayed for me all this year in 2009 and helped me out of very torrid personal times and battles.

It is called

Prayers2Go.com

Basically: you order dinner or burgers for friends all the time. Maybve all they ever needed was a prayer.

For Here or For to Go.