Data Mining with R
There exists many solutions to implement your data mining algorithms: C/C++, Java, Matlab, R, etc. Any of these languages have their advantages and drawbacks. In this post, I will consider R, since it is the one I am using at my job. Here is a list of the reasons why R is a good choice for data mining:
- It is fast (at least faster than Matlab)
- It is completely free
- Several data mining algorithms are available as packages (such as rpart)
- It contains several libraries for graphics
A comprehensive document about using R for data mining has been written by Luis Torgo at University of Porto, Portugal. The document of 125 pages contains two case studies, one of which is in finance. It is thus a very good introduction for people using R for data mining.
R has also several drawbacks. Out of the lack of information regarding errors, the most important drawbacks are certainly the ones that concern the conception of its basic structures such as vector/matrix, incremental loop, etc. You can have details about R design flaws at Radford Neal’s blog.
Comments
8 Comments on Data Mining with R
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romain on
Thu, 18th Sep 2008 8:47 pm
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Sandro Saitta on
Tue, 23rd Sep 2008 8:22 am
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Anonymous on
Tue, 23rd Sep 2008 1:53 pm
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Sandro Saitta on
Wed, 24th Sep 2008 10:55 am
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Anonymous on
Thu, 25th Sep 2008 11:37 pm
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Shane Butler on
Sun, 28th Sep 2008 11:13 pm
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Sandro Saitta on
Mon, 29th Sep 2008 12:56 pm
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Steffen on
Thu, 6th Nov 2008 1:03 pm
I used R not so long ago for doing data-mining oriented study and found rattle:
http://rattle.togaware.com/
Even though I prefer the interface of orange (http://www.ailab.si/orange/), rattle combine the power of R and a simple interface which helps diving into the data…
Thanks for sharing Romain. Personally, I write my R code with Tinn-R and execute it directly in the terminal (either Windows or Linux).
I’m glad to see you’ve found R 
Jay
After years of research using Matlab and Java, I eventually found R
Is there any way to use R with another object-oriented programming language? That would be fun…
Thanks for the link Shane!
Thanks for the links sandro. I am using R mainly for prototyping, and then prefer more “reliable” environments like RapidMiner to “freeze” my results.
@objectorientedprogramming: You can code objectoriented-style in R by using S4-classes. Since R is a scripting language, to many coders tend to define their own standards within their code, which makes the interaction of functions from different packages a real mess. S4 can reduce this mess.
just a few remarks
Steffen
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