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Forex Trading with R : Part 2

February 11, 2011 by Themos Kalafatis
with 1,105 views
3

In the previous post the first steps were given for building the basis for trading forex. Now it is time to build the actual classifiers that  can give us future buy / hold / sell signals.Assuming that everything is in working order and the instructions given in  the previous post were followed we can start building these... [read more]

Why Learn R? It's the language of Statistics

June 24, 2010 by David Smith
with 437 views
0

In the Introduction to his book “R for SAS and SPSS Users” (Springer 2009) Robert Muenchen offers ten reasons for learning R if you already know SAS or SPSS. All ten reasons say something important about R. However, his fourth reason: “R’s language is more powerful than SAS or SPSS. R developers write most of their analytic methods using... [read more]

The impact of the drug war in Mexico

June 18, 2010 by David Smith
with 505 views
0

For the last couple of years, Mexico has been in the midst of an escalating drug war, with violent crime on the upswing in many areas. But tracking the impact quantitatively is difficult: in Mexico, about 85% of crimes go unreported, and corruption leads to inaccurate reporting in some districts. Diego Valle has taken on the task of... [read more]

Learning R

June 17, 2010 by David Smith
with 595 views
0

When R is brought up as a possibility for doing statistics or data mining or any sort of predictive analytics among non R users, someone will invariably point out that R has a “steep learning curve”, and the response among those gathered usually includes a significant amount of head nodding. Even those who have put in heroic... [read more]

Tabled: Is R the Solution?

June 5, 2010 by Michael Wexler
with 421 views
0

Sometimes, in this world of magical analytics and open source software, the most basic stuff doesn’t get done. Today, we’ll talk about Tables. Yes, the simple process of making a nice looking table for a presentation is still a manual process of pasting into Excel and manually fiddling. When I can cluster gigs of data but I can’t... [read more]

Because it's Friday: The dating equation

May 28, 2010 by David Smith
with 382 views
0

According to internet lore, there's a mathematical equation that governs the lower bound for the socially acceptable age of a potential dating partner: half your age plus 7, or, in mathematical terms, if x is your age then the lower bound is f(x) = x/2 + 7. Seems simple, right? if you're 20, then the minimum socially acceptable age for... [read more]

R and the Next Big Thing

April 19, 2010 by David Smith
with 185 views
0

I've been traveling for the past few days (for the R/Finance 2010 conference in Chicago), so I'd missed much of the reaction to AnnMaria De Mars' article last week where she claimed that "R is an epic fail". Understandably, that inflammatory statement provoked many reactions from the R community on Twitter and in the blogosphere. (... [read more]

A free book on Geostatistical Mapping with R

April 2, 2010 by David Smith
with 173 views
0

Tomislav Hengl of the University of Amsterdam has published new book, A Practical Guide to Geostatistical Mapping. It's jam-packed with 291 pages on mapping and analyzing spatial data using free software including R, SAGA, GRASS, ILWIS and Google Earth, and freely-available map data. The book itself is also available for free, as... [read more]

Visualizing droughts with R

March 15, 2010 by David Smith
with 168 views
0

Physicist and weather scientist Joe Wheatley used R to design and create a useful visual representation of how drought affects a region over long time-scales. Instead of charting absolute rainfall (or lack thereof), he instead charts the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), where extreme values (above 2 or below -2) indicate... [read more]

Intelligent Enterprise: You Can Predict that R Will Succeed

March 3, 2010 by David Smith
with 167 views
0

Analyst David Stodder at Intelligent Enterprise also noted the activity around R at the recent Predictive Analytics World conference in San Francisco, and he reviews his impressions in a column today. In fact, he attributes the increasing prominence of predictive analytics to R: Possibly the most important factor influencing the... [read more]

What’s ahead for market research in 2010?

January 5, 2010 by David Bakken
with 874 views
1

Looking back over the last year in market research offers an opportunity to consider just which transformations, new ideas, industry trends, and emerging techniques might shape MR over the next few years.  Here’s a list of eight topics I’ve been following, with thoughts on the potential impact each might have on MR over the next... [read more]

Training students on mega-scale data

October 14, 2009 by David Smith
with 130 views
0

In a New York Times article (sub. req.) published on the weekend, IBM and Google expressed doubts that the students graduating from US universities today have the chops to deal with the mulit-terabyte datasets that are becoming commonplace online and in domains like bioscience and astronomy today. From the article:For the most part,... [read more]

Interactive stock visualizations with R

September 7, 2009 by David Smith
with 159 views
0

Jeroen Ooms, who recently completed his Masters in Statistics at Utrech University, has created an outstanding web-based drag-and-drop application for visualizing financial data. With his "StockPlot" t application, you can select any stock from a number of world exchanges (including NASDAQ, DAX, FTSE), and drag it to a worksheet to see... [read more]

Because it's Friday: United States of Obesity

August 21, 2009 by David Smith
with 197 views
0

Reader BR pointed me to a, er, unique representation of the proportion of the proportion of the population in each of the 50 US states with a BMI above 30: The United States of Obesity. Here's a small part of the graphic: I can't help but feel that this charts represents an opportunity lost (and I'm not talking about the dietary habits... [read more]

R Examples for Actuaries

August 18, 2009 by David Smith
with 236 views
0

Sometimes I think "Web Archaeology" ought to be a recognized discipline. There are some real treasures to be found in long-abandoned websites, with just a little exploration.For example, today I stumbled on the website for "R Souls", a user group devoted to the actuarial uses of R at Lloyds of London. Seems like it hasn't been active... [read more]

Google's coding standards for R

August 13, 2009 by David Smith
with 146 views
0

For any software application in production and produced by a development team, coding standards are an essential tool for promoting maintainability and quality. Google has recently published their coding standards for R, with a compendium of common-sense tips for keeping an R project in shape. The standards Google R programmers adhere... [read more]