I was recently interviewed by Bigstep as part of their Expert Interview program. Click here to read the interview and let me know what you think!
Author: Ajay Ohri
Accelerating R: RStudio and the new R Consortium
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…
View original post 138 more words
Install Package in Python from Github
You can use
pip install git+git://github.com/yhat/ggplot.git
or
pip install --upgrade https://github.com/yhat/ggplot/tarball/master
Vote for DecisionStats logo
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?
- 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. 
Summer School in Analytics
This is the brochure for Summer School in Analytics- a ten day intensive program in classroom at Delhi, India on R, Python and SAS languages.

