Wisdom And Wonder

ProjectTemplate for R

ProjectTemplate is a system for automating the thoughtless parts of a data analysis project

Just read the overview. If you are not already doing these things, by any means, then see what this package has to offer immediately. It will make your life better.
If you are not convinced yet, then read the sections listed on the left. They do so, so much.
One nice example is the great flexibility provided in its configuration. For example, automatically converting loaded data.frame to data.table is just one flag, very nice.

Milwaukee Data Science: Making Sense of Data Science via a Metromap & Lightning Talks

This could be the start of something valuable community; can’t wait to see wherever it leads!

Do what you can

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.

— Arthur Ashe
Via Ben.

Set image width in org-mode

Make org and export use the same image width via this post:

#+attr_latex: :width 4in :placement [H]
#+attr_org: :width 400
./images/batch-multiple.png

An example cause of burnout

There are many recipes for burnout.
One of them by analogy is to operate a 28 ton earth moving machine powered by a 2 horsepower (hp) engine attached to an unlimited fuel supply (use your imagination).
It doesn’t matter how capable the machine is or the value of the fuel you are using, the engine is insufficient, but will run for a while, before it “burns out”.

Practicing debugging instance eca20d1a-21de-0a34-ff53-833f3aea7918

This post documents how bugs get de-bugged.

It is short, and sweet, with enough depth to be interesting.

Packrat: A Likely Use Case

This post captures a relatively common occurrence:

New versions of required software are released
They break the software you use
So use previous versions

If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to check out Packrat
to handle a case like this. I will.

Happiness vs Enjoyment

Happiness and enjoyment are easily confused because they mostly feel the same.

Their major difference though seems to be the duration of the feeling and the
ease by which the state may be entered.

Happiness seems to be more long-lived while enjoyment seems to me short-lived.

Happiness seems to be mostly independent of the circumstances while enjoyment seems to
be mostly dependent upon the circumstances.

It seems like a worthwhile endeavor to explore where we invest our time, whether
it is in happiness or enjoyment, and evaluate the results of our investment.

Natural Earth public domain map dataset

Natural Earth is a public domain map dataset available at 1:10m, 1:50m, and 1:110 million scales. Featuring tightly integrated vector and raster data, with Natural Earth you can make a variety of visually pleasing, well-crafted maps with cartography or GIS software.

Via Hadley Wickham.

When is a number an integer?

This post poses a seemingly very simple question:
“When is a number an integer?”
and very quickly evolves to provide a delightful exposition of what it means when someone answers with “it depends”.
My vote is that the most intuitive and least-surprising approach is x%%1==0.