Book Image

Data Analysis with R

Book Image

Data Analysis with R

Overview of this book

Frequently the tool of choice for academics, R has spread deep into the private sector and can be found in the production pipelines at some of the most advanced and successful enterprises. The power and domain-specificity of R allows the user to express complex analytics easily, quickly, and succinctly. With over 7,000 user contributed packages, it’s easy to find support for the latest and greatest algorithms and techniques. Starting with the basics of R and statistical reasoning, Data Analysis with R dives into advanced predictive analytics, showing how to apply those techniques to real-world data though with real-world examples. Packed with engaging problems and exercises, this book begins with a review of R and its syntax. From there, get to grips with the fundamentals of applied statistics and build on this knowledge to perform sophisticated and powerful analytics. Solve the difficulties relating to performing data analysis in practice and find solutions to working with “messy data”, large data, communicating results, and facilitating reproducibility. This book is engineered to be an invaluable resource through many stages of anyone’s career as a data analyst.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Data Analysis with R
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Using a bigger and faster machine


Instead of rewriting critical sections of your code, consider running the code on a machine with a faster processor, more cores, more RAM memory, faster bus speeds, and/or reduced disk latency. This suggestion may seem like a glib cop-out, but it's not. Sure, using a bigger machine for your analytics sometimes means extra money, but your time, dear reader, is money too. If, over the course of your work, it takes you many hours to optimize your code adequately, buying or renting a better machine may actually prove to be the more cost-effective solution.

Going down this road needn't require that you purchase a high-powered machine outrightly; there are now virtual servers that you can rent online for finite periods of time at reasonable prices. Some of these virtual servers can be configured to have 2 terabytes of RAM and 40 virtual processors. If you are interested in learning more on this option, look at the offerings of Digital Ocean, Amazon Elastic Compute...