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The RStudio guys have really made R a pleasure to use. Thank you guys! The core language is still a confusing mess (I'm still never sure when to use a matrix,

The RStudio guys have really made R a pleasure to use. Thank you guys! The core language is still a confusing mess (I'm still never sure when to use a matrix, a dataframe, a list..), but if you use their tools you can ignore it for the most part. In under 10 lines you can massage data and generate fantastic graphics. A little off topic: but does anyone know what their business model is? Are they going to run out of money and burnout in a year or two?

Hansi 12y ago
Business model is sell to enterprise and consulting: http://www.rstudio.com/pricing/ http://www.rstudio.com/pricing/
- hadley 12y ago
  FWIW we don't do any consulting, although we do a decent amount of training.
hadley 12y ago
If you're confused about R's data structures, please read http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Data-structures.html http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Data-structures.html and let me know if it doesn't help. And no, we're not planning on burning out. We currently sell three things: * RStudio Server Pro. An commercial version of the open-source server version that provides stuff that corporate IT wants (e.g. monitoring, more auth options, ...) * Shiny Server Pro. A more flexible version of the open-source shiny server that offers more configurability (e.g. number of R processes per app), and again other stuff that corporate IT wants. * Right to use the RStudio desktop IDE to companies who don't want to use AGPL software
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - hadley 12y ago
    Have a look at http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Subsetting.html#subsetting-operators http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Subsetting.html#subsetting-operators. There was just too much material to fit in one chapter.
smachlis 12y ago
Here's how I think of it, which has been working for me: matrix - If you have data that would make sense to be in a spreadsheet-type format and all your data are numbers. dataframe - If you have data that would make sense to be in a spreadsheet-type format and some columns are numbers but other columns are something else (character strings, dates, TRUE/FALSE); but each column is only one thing. That is, you have one column that's all dates, another column that's all numbers, yet another column that's all character strings, etc. list - if you need to mix data types within a certain entity (vector or column of data).
- hadley 12y ago
  Unless you're doing linear algebra (or really care about memory usage), you almost never need to use a matrix in R.
- grayclhn 12y ago
  I'd amend that a little: use a matrix when you're actually calculating statistics (internally to the function). Clean your data so it always fits in a data frame when you load it. Lists are for representing things like data scraped from html before converting it to a data frame.
- jowiar 12y ago
  To piggyback on what hadley said a bit, I find thinking of a data frame as a "collection of records", and a matrix as "two dimensional data" to be a bit better. One useful heuristic worth asking is "Does it make sense to sort this data by something". In that case, you have a data frame. Whereas if you want to perform matrix math on something (inverting it, multiplying it by another matrix, reducing it, etc.), you have a matrix. Things that I use a matrix for can generally also be expressed as a data frame with columns rowId, colId, and value. If it doesn't make sense in that format, a matrix is generally not the appropriate structure.
  - hadley 12y ago
    That's a great explanation! Data frame for data analysis; matrix for math.
wesleyy 12y ago
It's always great when you spend 10 hours trying to debug something and then find out from a mailing list that it's actually a bug in R. :(

Hansi 12y ago

Business model is sell to enterprise and consulting: http://www.rstudio.com/pricing/ http://www.rstudio.com/pricing/

hadley 12y ago
FWIW we don't do any consulting, although we do a decent amount of training.

hadley 12y ago

If you're confused about R's data structures, please read http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Data-structures.html http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Data-structures.html and let me know if it doesn't help. And no, we're not planning on burning out. We currently sell three things: * RStudio Server Pro. An commercial version of the open-source server version that provides stuff that corporate IT wants (e.g. monitoring, more auth options, ...) * Shiny Server Pro. A more flexible version of the open-source shiny server that offers more configurability (e.g. number of R processes per app), and again other stuff that corporate IT wants. * Right to use the RStudio desktop IDE to companies who don't want to use AGPL software

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
- hadley 12y ago
  Have a look at http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Subsetting.html#subsetting-operators http://adv-r.had.co.nz/Subsetting.html#subsetting-operators. There was just too much material to fit in one chapter.

smachlis 12y ago

Here's how I think of it, which has been working for me: matrix - If you have data that would make sense to be in a spreadsheet-type format and all your data are numbers. dataframe - If you have data that would make sense to be in a spreadsheet-type format and some columns are numbers but other columns are something else (character strings, dates, TRUE/FALSE); but each column is only one thing. That is, you have one column that's all dates, another column that's all numbers, yet another column that's all character strings, etc. list - if you need to mix data types within a certain entity (vector or column of data).

hadley 12y ago
Unless you're doing linear algebra (or really care about memory usage), you almost never need to use a matrix in R.
grayclhn 12y ago
I'd amend that a little: use a matrix when you're actually calculating statistics (internally to the function). Clean your data so it always fits in a data frame when you load it. Lists are for representing things like data scraped from html before converting it to a data frame.
jowiar 12y ago
To piggyback on what hadley said a bit, I find thinking of a data frame as a "collection of records", and a matrix as "two dimensional data" to be a bit better. One useful heuristic worth asking is "Does it make sense to sort this data by something". In that case, you have a data frame. Whereas if you want to perform matrix math on something (inverting it, multiplying it by another matrix, reducing it, etc.), you have a matrix. Things that I use a matrix for can generally also be expressed as a data frame with columns rowId, colId, and value. If it doesn't make sense in that format, a matrix is generally not the appropriate structure.
- hadley 12y ago
  That's a great explanation! Data frame for data analysis; matrix for math.

wesleyy 12y ago

It's always great when you spend 10 hours trying to debug something and then find out from a mailing list that it's actually a bug in R. :(