Wednesday, June 22, 2011

RStudio

If you're a user of the R statistical software environment (and you should be - if you're not, it's the best free lunch in town), then the (fairly) recently released RStudio user interface will undoubtedly interest you. Here's a quote from the description on their website, to give you the flavour:
  • "RStudio brings together everything you need to be productive with R in a single, customizable environment. Its intuitive interface and powerful coding tools help you get work done faster.
  • RStudio is available for all major platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. It can even run alongside R on a server, enabling multiple users to access the RStudio IDE using a web browser.
  • Like R, RStudio is available under a free software license that guarantees the freedom to share and change the software, and to make sure it remains free software for all its users. "

RStudio has been getting quite of a bit of attention - positive attention - especially in places that matter, such as R-Bloggers.

Anyway, I'd encourage you to check it out. If you're not already an R user, this interface might persuade you to take the leap. Just make sure that you update your installation of R to (at least) 2.11.1 before trying to use RStudio.



© 2011, David E. Giles

7 comments:

  1. Prof. Giles, I love the blog! Much appreciated. But since you like R so much, why do you post all your data and code in EViews (which is proprietary and many of us do not have access to). R code and data would be great if you wouldn't mind :-)!

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  2. Hello dear Prof. Giles.
    I'd encourage Ben's remark by stating that once you'd start publishing R code (with an "R" label" for these posts), you'd be most welcome to add your blog to R-bloggers:
    http://www.r-bloggers.com/add-your-blog/

    Best,
    Tal

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  3. Ben: Point taken. However, one problem is that most econometricians still don't use R. Also, I'm an R novice. I'll try and get R code up whenever I can, though. BTW - Gretl is a close approximation to EViews, and is free. I should post about it!
    Appreciate your suggestion very much.

    DG

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  4. Tal: I'll do what I can. It would certainly force me to become more proficient with R!

    BTW - both Tal and Ben - "Dave" is preferred to "Prof. Giles"! ;-)

    DG

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  5. Dear Dave, Thanks for letting us know about gretl. When even stattransfer could not import/export EViews data files, I knew I was in a bind!

    As for econometricians and R, I hope they learn its manifold virtues and soon! If you are having trouble making R purr, let us know and I am sure we can offer suggestions. It sure can be tricky at first.

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  6. Hi... Dave (sorry, still sounds weird to me!),

    Just thought I'd chime in with my own R solution - I use Eclipse. Eclipse is a general open-source IDE that has free plugins for many platforms (for R: http://www.walware.de/goto/statet). This lets me use a single IDE (Eclipse) to do my statistical work, my LaTeX writing, and my Java coding.

    ~Owen

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  7. Owen - great to hear from you. I like the sound of Eclipse, and will check it ou! Thanks a lot.
    DG

    ReplyDelete

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