5 ms·

Building a statistical significance testing web service powered by R

20 points by garysieling 14y ago

taf2 14y ago
This is really neat! You should post more examples, like if I had a range of data points could I post that data set and have R output a best fit line?
- garysieling 14y ago
  Thanks, glad you liked it, I have more examples coming. There is a library you can install that looks like a web-based charting frontend for R, although I have not had a chance to try it- http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~jeroen/ggplot2/ http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~jeroen/ggplot2/
tocomment 14y ago
Would it be possible to code everything in something like Django to handle the HTTP, view parts, and farm out the calculations to R? How would you design that?
- k3n 14y ago
  Of course, but at that point you likely wouldn't be using any R-leaning webservers; rather, you'd start with any old web server, and then just make shell calls to R. Or, you _could_ do the "R as a service" type thing, and have your normal [Django] stack make a webservice call to the R-webservice.
- pav3l 14y ago
  Yes, you can use rpy/rpy2 in your python code to delegate stats to R
- hessenwolf 14y ago
  I made one in pylons. It kept blowing up in the memory. It was a bitch to get up and running and then debug. And then, well, I wasn't sure what I couldn't do with highcharts and python libraries instead.
- garysieling 14y ago
  That's the general direction I am heading, although I haven't picked a front-end yet. I'm thinking of returning the more complex results as JSON, and using ExtJS for grids, charts, etc.
tangue 14y ago
Keep in mind that R is an in-memory language and that each object you'll be creating will be stored in RAM. This could be tricky if you have huge datasets
larrydag 14y ago
I've heard good things about the package Rserve. It's a good way to combine a lot of server side R requests with your online app of choice. http://www.rforge.net/Rserve/doc.html http://www.rforge.net/Rserve/doc.html
tnai 14y ago
There's also an R buildpack for Heroku. There's a sample app written using Sinatra (Ruby) included. https://github.com/virtualstaticvoid/heroku-buildpack-r https://github.com/virtualstaticvoid/heroku-buildpack-r

20 points by garysieling 14y ago

taf2 14y ago

This is really neat! You should post more examples, like if I had a range of data points could I post that data set and have R output a best fit line?

garysieling 14y ago
Thanks, glad you liked it, I have more examples coming. There is a library you can install that looks like a web-based charting frontend for R, although I have not had a chance to try it- http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~jeroen/ggplot2/ http://www.stat.ucla.edu/~jeroen/ggplot2/

tocomment 14y ago

Would it be possible to code everything in something like Django to handle the HTTP, view parts, and farm out the calculations to R? How would you design that?

k3n 14y ago
Of course, but at that point you likely wouldn't be using any R-leaning webservers; rather, you'd start with any old web server, and then just make shell calls to R. Or, you _could_ do the "R as a service" type thing, and have your normal [Django] stack make a webservice call to the R-webservice.
pav3l 14y ago
Yes, you can use rpy/rpy2 in your python code to delegate stats to R
hessenwolf 14y ago
I made one in pylons. It kept blowing up in the memory. It was a bitch to get up and running and then debug. And then, well, I wasn't sure what I couldn't do with highcharts and python libraries instead.
garysieling 14y ago
That's the general direction I am heading, although I haven't picked a front-end yet. I'm thinking of returning the more complex results as JSON, and using ExtJS for grids, charts, etc.

tangue 14y ago

Keep in mind that R is an in-memory language and that each object you'll be creating will be stored in RAM. This could be tricky if you have huge datasets

larrydag 14y ago

I've heard good things about the package Rserve. It's a good way to combine a lot of server side R requests with your online app of choice. http://www.rforge.net/Rserve/doc.html http://www.rforge.net/Rserve/doc.html

tnai 14y ago

There's also an R buildpack for Heroku. There's a sample app written using Sinatra (Ruby) included. https://github.com/virtualstaticvoid/heroku-buildpack-r https://github.com/virtualstaticvoid/heroku-buildpack-r