Rodeo 1.0: a Python IDE on your Desktop

This looks cool.

Getting Started with Spark (in Python)

Using Python, here.

Launch Apache Spark on AWS EC2 and Initialize SparkR Using RStudio

Helpful information here.

JAGS

Looks like JAGS 4.0 is out.

Supercharge R with Spark: Getting Apache's SparkR Up and Running on Amazon Web Services (AWS)

Very useful introduction here.

SparkR quick start that works

Simple but useful, here.

Emacs key bindings for Rstudio

The preview version of Rstudio (0.99.646), which is stable enough for daily usage, finally implemented an Emacs key binding.

Nimble 0.4 is out

Quite a number of new features. More details here.

New package "dplyrr" - Utilities for comfortable use of dplyr with databases

This package is potentially useful for big data analysis.

rbokeh - R Interface to Bokeh

This new visualization package looks really promising!

Introductory R Markdown: dynamic documents and reproducible research for beginners

Good tutorial here.

Three-way crosstabulation using R

Here is one way to do it.

Is Linux Better than OS X? GNU, Open Source and Apple in History

Some history here.

Happy collaboration with Rmd to docx

This is really cool!

R-based big data alternatives

Very helpful video.

This one for SparkR.

Ipython notebook in Pycharm

I did not realize Pycharm provides a complete IDE for ipython notebook. This is really cool.

Spark 1.4 for RStudio

Finally, this is how to get it right.

Spark And Hadoop Are Friends, Not Foes

An informative post.

SparkRext

This new package looks pretty cool.

Outline view with Rstudio

The daily build version of Rstudio and Rstudio server (v. 0.99.617) finally introduce an outline panel for Rmarkdown documents. This is a highly welcomed feature.

SageMathCloud

SageMathCloud provides a cloud computation platform for Julia, Python and R. It looks useful, at least for teaching purpose. It does not, however, seem to to allow the users to install third-party packages. Given that one big attraction of R comes from its huge package ecosystem, this can potentially be a problem for serious usage.

Analyzing big data with Revolution R Enterprise

A short and yet clear introduction here.

Nimble

Just discovered this little package for Bayesian analysis. I think it is on the right direction. I hope it handle discrete parameters better than Stan.

How to use SparkR within Rstudio?

Setting up Spark and SparkR is quite easy (assume you are running v.1.4): just grab one of the pre-built binaries and unzip to a folder. There is also a shell script to start SparkR from command line. The document suggest to put the following lines

Sys.setenv(SPARK_HOME="/home/shige/bin/spark")
.libPaths(c(file.path(Sys.getenv("SPARK_HOME"), "R", "lib"), .libPaths()))
library(SparkR)
sc <- sparkR.init(master="local")

into the .Rprofile file. This, however, has the undesirable side effect of adding yet another directory to which R packages can be installed.

My solution is:

1. Create a soft link of the SparkR directory in the the directory where other R packages are installed (ln -s /home/shige/bin/spark/R/lib/SparkR /home/shige/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/3.2)
2. Add (Sys.setenv(SPARK_HOME="/home/shige/bin/spark")) to the .Rprofile file.
3. Add (Sys.setenv(SPARKR_SUBMIT_ARGS ='"--packages" "com.databricks:spark-csv_2.10:1.0.3" "sparkr-shell"')) to the .Rprofile.

All set.

SparkR

The SparkR project integrates R and Spark for big data processing. It looks very promising.

SEM DiagrammeR

The "sem" package makes use of the "DiagrammeR" package to draw path diagram, very cool!

IPython Markdown Opportunities in IPython Notebooks and Rstudio

Some interesting ideas here.

A new GTK theme

The paper theme looks really nice.

Rstudio supports Chinese input

Not so long ago, Rstudio did not fully support Chinese characters. The server version seemed fine but the desktop version did not. Now, with the new official version of 0.99.441, the support for Chinese input is complete.

Data science and our magical mind: Scott Mongeau at TEDxRSM

Useful talk (causal inference, scientific methods, etc.)

A Stargazer Cheatsheet

Useful tips here.

CSS templates for tables

I am compiling a list of free CSS templates to make good-looking tables:

1. Stylish CSS Tables Tutorial
2. Custom CSS for HTML generated using RStudio

Using knitr and pandoc to create reproducible scientific reports

Here are some helpful tips.

Snowdoop

This looks promising.

Great R packages for data import, wrangling & visualization

Nice summary of useful R packages, a few of which are unfamiliar to me before.

How to get your very own RStudio Server and Shiny Server with DigitalOcean

Very useful introduction.

JetBrains development tools are free for academic users

This is definitely a good news. I have been using the free community version of the python development tool and now they have a new tool for C++.

Running Spark on R with SparkR

This may be helpful.

Texts, a visual markdown editor

Finally Texts includes the bibliography capability. Now it is a lightweight but complete writing environment for academics.

Scraping web pages

I find the following resources useful:

1. Scraping Web Pages With R
2. Log File Analysis with R
3. How to read HTML tables with htmltab()
4. Rvest package vignettes
5. Web Scraping with R
6. rvest Introduction
7. Using rvest to Scrape an HTML Table
8. Scrape website data with the new R package rvest

World Happiness Report

This one looks interesting.

GCC 5.1 is out

This is huge.

No reboot patching comes to Linux 4.0

I look forward to this upgrade.

Two of my favorite distros

Ubuntu MATE and Manjaro are my favorite Linux distros.

DiagrammeR

This might be the best diagram creation solution in R and Rmarkdown.

MultiWriter

MultiWriter is a handy utility to write multiple flash drives all at once.

Introduction to Hadley's packages

This online slide provides good introduction of various R packages developed by Hadley Wickham.

dupeGuru

A small Linux utility to find and remove duplicated files in hard drive.

Cheatsheet for ggplot2

Here is a cheatsheet for the ggplot2 package.

JASP

JASP is an interesting project. It is based on R with additional facilities and functions such as automatic table generation. There appears to be an R package that provide that functions directly to R users. Very worth checking out.

How to create and show a presentation from the command line on Linux

This is pretty cool.

Pinker's talk on human nature

Interesting talk about human nature and evolutionary psychology by Steven Pinker.

An introduction to psychometric theory with applications in R

This e-book provides useful information on using R for IRT.

Librem 15 looks promising

A laptop armed entirely with free software, looks promising.

How To Create A Multiboot USB From Ubuntu Using MultiSystem

This is really awesome!

How to Boot Your Computer from a USB Flash Drive

Useful tips here.

Statistical Rethinking: A Bayesian Course with R Examples

An interesting book. The accompanied R package provides seamless integration between Stan and R.

The ggplot2 book

According to this post, the updated version of the ggplot2 book is coming. I grab the github repo and compiled the pdf version of the preliminary draft.

Useful cheatsheets

Good resources.