Why is RATTLE my favorite R package?
because it allows data mining in a very nice interface.
Complicated software need not have complicated interfaces.
Have a look-
(Note- download rattle from http://rattle.togaware.com)
For better visibility please click the full screen button or click the second pps below- automatically advances every 5 secs
One area where clearly GUI methods are preferable to command line methods in R, is data input. There is no need of learning read.csv or read.table when these options are only two clicks away in any R GUI. For academics/students there is a definite need to easily access
datasets from attached packages just as it is a need for business analysts to access databases with a few clicks than learn or read pages of pdf on RODBC. However some GUI (like Rattle) need data only in data frames, rather than list or arrays-this limits R’s flexibility. These are my views but you can see and compare views of data input in R Commander, Rattle and Deducer.
My annual traffic to this blog was almost 99,000 . Add in additional views on networking sites plus the 400 plus RSS readers- so I can say traffic was 1,20,000 for 2010. Nice. Thanks for reading and hope it was worth your time. (this is a long post and will take almost 440 secs to read but the summary is just given)
My intent is either to inform you, give something useful or atleast something interesting.
see below-
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | ||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | 6,311 | 4,701 | 4,922 | 5,463 | 6,493 | 4,271 |
| Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Total |
|---|
| 5,041 | 5,403 | 17,913 | 16,430 | 11,723 | 10,096 | 98,767 |
Sandro Saita from http://www.dataminingblog.com/ just named me for an award on his blog (but my surname is ohRi , Sandro left me without an R- What would I be without R :)) ).
Aw! I am touched. Google for “Data Mining Blog” and Sandro is the best that it is in data mining writing.
”
DMR People Award 2010
There are a lot of active people in the field of data mining. You can discuss with them on forums. You can read their blogs. You can also meet them in events such as PAW or KDD. Among the people I follow on a regular basis, I have elected:Ajay Ori
He has been very active in 2010, especially on his blog . Good work Ajay and continue sharing your experience with us!”
What did I write in 2010- stuff.
What did you read on this blog- well thats the top posts list.
So how do people come here –
well I guess I owe Tal G for almost 9000 views ( incidentally I withdrew posting my blog from R- Bloggers and Analyticbridge blogs – due to SEO keyword reasons and some spam I was getting see (below))
http://r-bloggers.com is still the CAT’s whiskers and I read it a lot.
I still dont know who linked my blog to a free sex movie site with 400 views but I have a few suspects.
| Referrer | Views |
|---|---|
 r-bloggers.com |
9,131 |
 Reddit |
3,829 |
| rattle.togaware.com |
1,500 |
 Twitter |
1,254 |
 Google Reader |
1,215 |
| linkedin.com |
717 |
| freesexmovie.irwanaf.com |
422 |
| analyticbridge.com |
341 |
 Google |
327 |
| coolavenues.com |
322 |
 Facebook |
317 |
| kdnuggets.com |
298 |
| dataminingblog.com |
278 |
 en.wordpress.com |
185 |
| google.co.in |
151 |
 xianblog.wordpress.com |
130 |
| inside-r.org |
124 |
| decisionstats.com |
119 |
| ifreestores.com |
117 |
| bits.blogs.nytimes.com |
108 |
–
Still reading this post- gosh let me sell you some advertising. It is only $100 a month (yes its a recession)
Advertisers are treated on First in -Last out (FILO)
I have been told I am obsessed with SEO , but I dont care much for search engines apart from Google, and yes SEO is an interesting science (they should really re name it GEO or Google Engine Optimization)
Apparently Hadley Wickham and Donald Farmer are big keywords for me so I should be more respectful I guess.
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| libre office | 925 |
| facebook analytics | 798 |
| test drive a chrome notebook | 467 |
| test drive a chrome notebook. | 215 |
| r gui | 203 |
| data mining | 163 |
| wps sas lawsuit | 158 |
| wordle.net | 133 |
| wps sas | 123 |
| google maps jet ski | 123 |
| test drive chrome notebook | 96 |
| sas wps | 89 |
| sas wps lawsuit | 85 |
| chrome notebook test drive | 83 |
| decision stats | 83 |
| best statistics software | 74 |
| hadley wickham | 72 |
| google maps jetski | 72 |
| libreoffice | 70 |
| doug savage | 65 |
| hive tutorial | 58 |
| funny india | 56 |
| spss certification | 52 |
| donald farmer microsoft | 51 |
| best statistical software | 49 |
What about outgoing links? Apparently I need to find a way to ask Google to pay me for the free advertising I gave their chrome notebook launch. But since their search engine and browser is free to me, guess we are even steven.
so in 2010,
SAS remained top daddy in business analytics,
R made revolutionary strides in terms of new packages,
JMP launched a new version,
SPSS got integrated with Cognos,
Oracle sued Google and did build a great Data Mining GUI,
Libre Office gave you a non Oracle Open office ( or open even more office)
2011 looks like a fun year. Have safe partying .
Using WP- Stats I set about answering this question-
What search keywords lead here-
Clearly Michael Jackson is down this year
And R GUI, Data Mining is up.
How does that affect my writing- given I get almost 250 visitors by search engines alone daily- assume I write nothing on this blog from now on.
It doesnt- I still write what ever code or poem that comes to my mind. So it is hurtful people misunderstimate the effort in writing and jump to conclusions (esp if I write about a company- I am not on payroll of that company- just like if I write about a poem- I am not a full time poet)
Over to xkcd
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| libre office | 818 |
| facebook analytics | 806 |
| michael jackson history | 240 |
| wps sas lawsuit | 180 |
| r gui | 168 |
| wps sas | 154 |
| wordle.net | 118 |
| sas wps | 116 |
| decision stats | 110 |
| sas wps lawsuit | 100 |
| google maps jet ski | 94 |
| data mining | 88 |
| doug savage | 72 |
| hive tutorial | 63 |
| spss certification | 63 |
| hadley wickham | 63 |
| google maps jetski | 62 |
| sas sues wps | 60 |
| decisionstats | 58 |
| donald farmer microsoft | 45 |
| libreoffice | 44 |
| wps statistics | 44 |
| best statistics software | 42 |
| r gui ubuntu | 41 |
| rstat | 37 |
| tamilnadu advanced technical training institute tatti | 37 |
YTD
| Search | Views |
|---|---|
| libre office | 818 |
| facebook analytics | 781 |
| wps sas lawsuit | 170 |
| r gui | 164 |
| wps sas | 125 |
| wordle.net | 118 |
| sas wps | 101 |
| sas wps lawsuit | 95 |
| google maps jet ski | 94 |
| data mining | 86 |
| decision stats | 82 |
| doug savage | 63 |
| hadley wickham | 63 |
| google maps jetski | 62 |
| hive tutorial | 56 |
| donald farmer microsoft | 45 |
A new release of the R GUI Rattle is making its way to CRAN (currently on the Austrian server).
Latest version 2.5.47 (revision 527) released 13 Nov 2010.
Change Log link for details –
http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/rattle/index.html
Major changes relate to simplifying the installation of Rattle under the recently released R 2.12.0 on Microsoft Windows 32bit and 64bit.
The major advance for R 2.12.0 is the improved support for 64bit Microsoft Windows and thus support for much larger datasets in memory.
See the new installation steps at http://datamining.togaware.com/survivor/Internet_Connected.html
For Microsoft Windows installations, to upgrade your Rattle installation you may need to remove any old installs of the Gtk+ libraries using the Uninstall application from the Microsoft Windows Control Panel). Then install the new Gtk2 library:
http://downloads.sourceforge.net/gtk-win/gtk2-runtime-2.22.0-2010-10-21-ash.exe
You can the update Rattle to version 2.5.47:
> install.packages(“rattle“)
>library(rattle)
> rattle.info()
The output from rattle.info() will include an “install.packages” command that will identify Rattle related packages that have updates available. You can cut-and-paste that command to the R prompt to have those packages updated in your installation.
Citation- From rattle-users@googlegroups.com
Until recently I had been thinking that RKWard was the only R GUI supporting Time Series Models-
however Bob Muenchen of http://www.r4stats.com/ was helpful to point out that the Epack Plugin provides time series functionality to R Commander.
Note the GUI helps explore various time series functionality.
Using Bulkfit you can fit various ARMA models to dataset and choose based on minimum AIC
And I also found an interesting Ref Sheet for Time Series functions in R-
http://cran.r-project.org/doc/contrib/Ricci-refcard-ts.pdf
and a slightly more exhaustive time series ref card
http://www.statistische-woche-nuernberg-2010.org/lehre/bachelor/datenanalyse/Refcard3.pdf
Also of interest a matter of opinion on issues in Time Series Analysis in R at
http://www.stat.pitt.edu/stoffer/tsa2/Rissues.htm
Of course , if I was the sales manager for SAS ETS I would be worried given the increasing capabilities in Time Series in R. But then again some deficiencies in R GUI for Time Series-
1) Layout is not very elegant
2) Not enough documented help (atleast for the Epack GUI- and no integrated help ACROSS packages-)
3) Graphical capabilties need more help documentation to interpret the output (especially in ACF and PACF plots)
More resources on Time Series using R.
http://people.bath.ac.uk/masgs/time%20series/TimeSeriesR2004.pdf
and http://www.statoek.wiso.uni-goettingen.de/veranstaltungen/zeitreihen/sommer03/ts_r_intro.pdf
and books
http://www.springer.com/economics/econometrics/book/978-0-387-77316-2
http://www.springer.com/statistics/statistical+theory+and+methods/book/978-0-387-75960-9
http://www.springer.com/statistics/statistical+theory+and+methods/book/978-0-387-75958-6
http://www.springer.com/statistics/statistical+theory+and+methods/book/978-0-387-75966-1
DECISION STATS 