A. Toolbox (necessary pieces of software you have to install first)

0. Latest version of R.
1. rtools: a minimal set of Unix utilities
2. ActivePerl: a scripting language
3. MinGW: Compiler system, uses GCC to produce Windows programs
4. Microsoft’s HTML Compiler: It’s called htmlhelp.exe and includes hhc.exe
5. A version of TeX (I use MiKTeX)

B. Change your Windows Path “environmental variable”

To set the path, right click on the “My Computer” icon on your desktop. Choose properties and click on the “advanced” tab. Click the environmental variables button and you will see a new window. Change the system variable “Path”. To do so, click on the variable and select the edit button. Change the path so that the directories containing MikTeX, Rtools, minGW, perl, R and the html help compiler. You will need to be very careful to type the path names correctly. See below for an example of the beginning of the path as set on my machine:

C:\Perl\site\bin;C:\Perl\bin;C:\Program Files\R\R-2.10.1\bin;c:\Rtools\bin;c:\Rtools\MinGW\bin;c:\Perl\bin;C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.7\miktex\bin

Restart your machine.

C. Build your hello package (eventually)

- Open a “Command Prompt” window. Check if path is correct (type path).
- Run R through the command prompt (type R)
- Type package.skeleton("hello",code_="hello.r")
- Exit R (type q() )
(the hello directory was created and now you have to carefully edit the DESCRIPTION file which is under the hello directory and the hello.Rd file which is under the man directory, search for examples of these files in other package installations, you can find plenty of them in the lib directory, which is under your R installation directory)

- Back to the command prompt window, type R CMD build hello (hello.tar.gz was created)
- Type R CMD INSTALL --build hello (hello.zip was created)
- Type R CMD check hello for an extensive check of your package installation

In the unlikely event that everything went fine so far (no errors, no warnings) you just have to upload the hello.tar.gz file to ftp://cran.r-project.org/incoming/ and send an email to cran@r-project.org that you did it. Otherwise, google the bad news and hope for the best.

Other resources for building R packages:
[Making packages under Windows]
[Creating R packages: a tutorial]
[An introduction to the R package mechanism]
[Create packages for R]

[via] Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

Thanks to Piled Higher and Deeper.

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Στο blog του Δασκάλου μου Ανδρέα Οικονόμου

Από το αρχείο του 11ου Δημοτικού Σχολείου Καβάλας

Ευχαριστώ πολύ Michael for your kind invitation and your hospitality.

Guitarras Nocturnas is a street group born in Buenos Aires and Barcelona, improvising around charming melodies.

In the Sea of Numbers

No beautiful languages
But endless calls day after day
No flowers or applause
But doubts and suspicion from others
No melting sceneries
But a bunch of dry numbers flowing
…

Statistical Poetry can be amusing and fun, yet thoughtful. I recall the feeling of joy I got at listening Michael Greenacre’s Summertime (mp3):

Summertime

It’s summertime,
Statistical modelling is easy,
Data are fitting,
Explained variance is high.

Your data are rich,
And your model’s good-looking,
So hush, statisticians, don’t you cry

With a little google search it’s easy to discover that there’s a good tradition of Statistical Songs. Take, for example, Brad Carlin’s, Mark Glickman’s and Johannes Schult’s compositions and parodies. Some of these songs convey messages as well, such as the faith of their composers in a particular theory. Come take a taste of the Bayesian Believer:

Bayesian Believer
(The Monkees – I’m a Believer)

I thought inference was just a fairy tale,
Confused by stats and probability,
Frequentist approaches (doo-doot doo-doot)
made no sense to me (doo-doot doo-doot)
Summarizing evidence by p!

Then I saw Tom Bayes — Now I’m a believer,
Without a trace — of doubt in my mind,

[I'm a] Bayesian (ooooh) — Oh, I’m a believer –
I couldn’t p now if I tried!
…