R

I discovered R a few month ago, and it's exactly the tool I was looking for to perform Exploratory Data Analysis on IT data (analyse of monitoring data, logs, performance tests results, workload analysis, code checks).

I used to do all that computation with Excell or ad hoc Java programs. Excell is great for small amounts of data, but when it comes to analyse 300000 lines of result, they won't fit in Excell (at least before Excell 2007).

R let me write scripts to compute statistics that I can run on data every day or when the test session ends with a minimum of manipulations. They are also easy to adapt when need be.

The rabbit is done with R as an illustration of 3D capabilities. I've found it at the R Graph Gallery. This site worth visiting to discover R graphic capabilities. I like R graphics. They are really neat and configurable. R comes with plots and histograms, very handly functions to convert data to graphics and advanced visualization features.

When I decided to write a post on R I balanced between a brief "WoW!" and a long run tutorial with all the nice things in R. As I'm to lazy to write a definitive tutorial on R, I decided to write a mind map and organize things I know about R up to now. I've also set up a pageflake with usefull links and blogs feeds.

R mind map

R pageflake

Please feel free to comment the mind map or pageflake as comments to that blogs. I'am new to R and may have make mistakes or ignored usefull resources.

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