Recently in R Statistics Category

I came across a fantastic R script from blogger Milk Trader.  It's about generating something called violin plots of volatility for the S&P500 index and the VIX, which he got from this CBOE paper.  I took that script a bit further and added in one of my current trend positions, $ARLP, just for fun. The plot is essentially a "combination of a box plot and a kernel density plot" and shows us the absolute value of volatility (negative returns are represented as positive) on the y axis. A very simple R code (you can get it on his site) with a great visual impact.  Great job Milk Trader! Don't miss my posts about Rapidminer and R! Sign up for my feed now! It's easy to do and I'd be eternally grateful!

I'm sure you've noticed that I put Google Ad's back on this site. Don't worry, I'm doing this on a temporary basis because I want you guys to help support my book habit! I admit, I'm a book junkie. These ads, in about 1 1/2 month's time allowed me, to buy Statistics: An Introduction using R and A Beginner's Guide to R (Use R) with no cost out of my pocket.  I like to read them in my spare time and will use them to extend my capabilities of using R in Rapidminer, and hopefully more video tutorials later. Thanks for that guys! I appreciate your support.

I'm picking up R really fast!  I made these simple charts in like 10 minutes!  Of course my code could be better, but its a start for yours truly.   Now if only I can get R to work with Rapidminer then I'd start downloading stock data on the fly, but no matter how hard I try I can't get it work!! Well no matter, I'll be getting a new laptop tomorrow so I'll try to configure it again. Got it work, FINALLY!  Let the data manipulation in Rapidminer begin.

I finally discovered the quantmod package for R, and I'm finally getting around to learning the darn software.  I think I'm going to abandon learning Python because R appears to do everything that I needit to do, AND it just so happens to be integrated with Rapidminer. Check out this simple graph I created of $XOM using R.  It took me two lines of code to generate it. getSymbols("XOM") chartSeries(XOM)  

I decided to install the "R" plugin in Rapidminer recently and seriously botched the process.  I botched it so bad that Rapidminer got stuck in an installation loop that would ask me to "Exit - Restart Rapidminer" continuously.  I couldn't get Rapidminer to load and I was stuck.  So what's the course of action if something like this happens to you? First and foremost, go to the experts.   I went to the Rapid-I forums and searched for "R plugin" and in about 10 seconds I found the answer to what I was looking for. Following Sebastian's answer to a poster's similar problem,  I found my extensions.xml file and edited it.  Then I restarted Rapidminer and all was well again the land of data analytics. So if this happens to you, just search for the extensions.xml file in your \.RapidMiner5\managed\ directory and delete out offending plugin.

First it was the credit crisis, now its earnings.  When will it stop?

Tokyo's Nikkei 225 tumbled 5.9% to 8,796.10 points in early afternoon trading, as investors nervously anticipated a season of modest to dismal earnings reports and outlooks. Earlier, the Dow Jones industrial average fell 231.77 points, or 2.5%, to 9,033.66, after blue-chip companies posted bleak earnings. [via Forbes]

It'll stop when people throw in the towel.  I thought I saw that recently but people are still too optimistic.  Maybe I'm just a permabear.