some R news
0 The R Foundation Website I guess the http://www.r-project.org team is busy prettyfying before the annual R users conference kicks in- the website of www.r-project.org ( I was told it looks has the aesthetic visual appeal of dead cat splattered on the autobahn a very HTML 4.0 kind of retro look )
I cant believe the R Site and R core honchos finds the following image the prettiest image to represent graphical abilities of R
The R core site has tremendous functionality and demand though I wonder if they can just put up some ads and get some funding/ two way research tie- up with Google —Google uses R extensively, and can help with online methods as well, and is listed as supporting organization at http://www.r-project.org/foundation/memberlist.html …..
The R archives are a collection of emails and thats not documentation at all – but
1 Revolution R Website and particularly David Smith’s blog is a great way to stay updated on R news at http://blog.revolution-computing.com/
I have covered REvolution R before, and they are truly impressive.
http://www.decisionstats.com/2009/01/31/interviewrichard-schultz-ceo-revolution-computing/
It seems the domain name revolutioncomputing.com was squatted ( by NC?) so thats why the hyphenated web name. It is a very lucid website- though I do request them to put more video/podcasts and a Tweet this button would be great :))
and another more techie post here
http://blog.revolution-computing.com/2009/05/verifying-zipfs-powerdistribution-law-for-cities.html
Another great source is the Twitter – it seems that Twitter R users use the hashtag #rstats to search for R kind of news and code – that should help R bloggers and at a later date users.
Click here for checking it out
http://search.twitter.com/search?q=#stats
2 Some more R forums and sites
Forum for R Enterprise Users http://www.revolution-computing.com/forum
A R Tips Site http://onertipaday.blogspot.com/
The R Journal ( yes there is a journal for all hard working R fans) http://journal.r-project.org/
R on Linkedin http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=77616
and the Analytic Bridge community group for R
http://www.analyticbridge.com/group/rprojectandotherfreesoftwaretools
2 Here is a terrific post by Robert Grossman
at http://blog.rgrossman.com/2009/05/17/running-r-on-amazons-ec2/
I liked the way he built the case for using R on Amazon EC2 ( Business case not Use case) and then proceeded to a step by step tutorial simple and powerful blog post. I hope R comes out with a standardized Online R Doc like that which is a single point search able archive for code – something like the SAS online doc (which remains free for WPS users 😉 ) but the way the web is evolving it seems the present mish mash method would continue
the main steps to use R on a pre-configured AMI.
Set up.
The set up needs to be done just once.
1. Set up an Amazon Web Services (AWS) account by going to:
aws.amazon.com.
If you already have an Amazon account for buying books and other items from Amazon, then you can use this account also for AWS.
2. Login to the AWS console
3. Create a “key-pair” by clinking on the link “Key Pairs” in the Configuration section of the Navigation Menu on the left hand side of the AWS console page.
4. Clink on the “Create Key Pair” button, about a quarter of the way down the page.
5. Name the key pair and save it to working directory, say /home/rlg/work.
Launching the AMI. These steps are done whenever you want to launch a new AMI.
1. Login to the AWS console. Click on the Amazon EC2 tab.
2. Click the “AMIs” button under the “Images and Instances” section of the left navigation menu of the AWS console.
3. Enter “opendatagroup” in the search box and select the AMI labeled
“opendatagroup/r-timeseries.manifest.xml”, which
is AMI instance “ami-ea846283″.
4. Enter the number of instances to launch (1), the name of the key pair that you have previously created, and select “web server” for the security group. Click the launch button to launch the AMI. Be sure to terminate the AMI when you are done.
5. Wait until the status of the AMI is “running.” This usually takes about 5 minutes.
Accessing the AMI.
1. Get the public IP address of the new AMI. The easiest way to do this is to select the AMI by checking the box. This provides some additional information about the AMI at the bottom of the window. You can can copy the IP address there.
2. Open a console window and cd to your working directory which contains the key-pair that you previously downloaded.
3. Type the command:
ssh -i testkp.pem -X root@ec2-67-202-44-197.compute-1.amazonaws.com
Here we assume that the name of the key-pair you created is “testkp.pem.” The flag “-X” starts a session that supports X11. If you don’t have X11 on your machine, you can still login and use R but the graphics in the example below won’t be displayed on your computer.
Using R on the AMI.
1. Change your directory and start R
#cd examples
#R
2. Test R by entering a R expression, such as:
> mean(1:100)
[1] 50.5
>
3. From within R, you can also source one of the example scripts to see some time series computations:
> source(‘NYSE.r’)
4. After a minute or so, you should see a graph on your screen. After the graph is finished being drawn, you should see a prompt:
CR to continue
Enter a carriage return and you should see another graph. You will need to enter a carriage return 8 times to complete the script (you can also choose to break out of the script if you get bored with the all the graphs.
5. When you are done, exit your R session with a control-D. Exit your ssh session with an “exit” and terminte your AMI from the Amazon AWS console. You can also choose to leave your AMI running (it is only a few dollars a day).
Acknowledgements: Steve Vejcik from Open Data Group wrote the R scripts and configured the AMI.
Ajay–Terrific R companies, blogs, tweets, research and sites, but do let me know your feedback . Just un-other R day.
