googleVis 0.4.7 with RStudio integration on CRAN

In my previous post, I presented a preview version of googleVis that provided an integration with RStudio's Viewer pane (introduced with version 0.98.441).

Over 80% in my little survey favoured the new default output mechanism of googleVis within RStudio. Hence, I uploaded googleVis 0.4.7 on CRAN over the weekend.

However, there were also some thoughtful comments, which suggested that the RStudio Viewer pane is not always the best option. Indeed, Flash charts and gvisMerge output will still be displayed in your default browser, but also if you work on larger charts and with smaller screen, then the browser might still be the better option compared to the Viewer pane - of course you can launch the browser from the Viewer pane as well.

Hence, googleVis gained a new option 'googleVis.viewer' that controls the default output of the googleVis plot method. On package load it is set to getOption("viewer") and if you use RStudio, then its viewer pane will be used for displaying non-Flash and un-merged charts. You can set options("googleVis.viewer" = NULL) and the googleVis plot function will open all output in the default browser again. Thanks to J.J. from RStudio for the tip.

The screen shot below shows a geo chart within the RStudio Viewer pane of the
devastating typhoon track of Haiyan that hit Southeast Asia last week.

Session Info

RStudio v0.98.456 and R version 3.0.2 (2013-09-25)

Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0 (64-bit)

locale:
[1] en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/C/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods  
[7] base     

other attached packages:
[1] googleVis_0.4.7 XML_3.95-0.2   

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] RJSONIO_1.0-3 tools_3.0.2  

Display googleVis charts within RStudio

The preview version 0.98.441 of RStudio introduced a new viewer pane to render local web content and with that it allows me to display googleVis charts within RStudio rather than in a separate browser window.

I think this is a rather nice feature and hence I have updated the plot method in googleVis to use the RStudio viewer pane as the default output. If you use another editor, or if the plot is using one of the Flash based charts, then the browser is still the default display.

The behaviour can also be controlled via the option viewer. Set options("viewer"=NULL) and googleVis will plot all output in the browser again.

Of course shiny apps can also run in the viewer pane. Here is the example of the renderGvis help page of googleVis. For more information about the new viewer pane see the online RStudio documentation.

For the time being you can get the next version 0.4.6 of googleVis from our project site only. Please get in touch if you find any issues or bugs with this version, or add them to our issues list.

Is this a step in the right direction? Please use the voting buttons below.

Session Info

R Under development (unstable) (2013-10-25 r64109)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0 (64-bit)

locale:
[1] en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/C/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods   base     

other attached packages:
[1] googleVis_0.4.6

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] RJSONIO_1.0-3 tools_3.1.0 

Next Kölner R User Meeting: 18 Oktober 2013

Quick reminder: The next Cologne R user group meeting is scheduled for this Friday, 18 October 2013. We will discuss and hear about the apply family of functions and the XLConnect package. Further details and the agenda are available on our KölnRUG Meetup site. Please sign up if you would like to come along. Notes from past meetings are available here.

Thanks to Revolution Analytics, who sponsors the Cologne R user group as part of their vector programme.

View Larger Map

googleVis 0.4.4 released with new formatting options for tables

Over the weekend googleVis 0.4.4 found its way to CRAN. The function gvisTable gained a new argument formats that allow users to define the formats numbers displayed in tables. Thanks to J. Buros, who contributed the code.

Example

Session Info

R version 3.0.1 (2013-05-16)
Platform: x86_64-apple-darwin10.8.0 (64-bit)

locale:
[1] en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8/C/en_GB.UTF-8/en_GB.UTF-8

attached base packages:
[1] stats     graphics  grDevices utils     datasets  methods  
[7] base     

other attached packages:
[1] googleVis_0.4.4

loaded via a namespace (and not attached):
[1] RJSONIO_1.0-3 tools_3.0.1 

ChainLadder 0.1.6 released with chain-ladder factor models

Version 0.1.6 of the ChainLadder package has been released and is already available from CRAN.

The new version adds the function CLFMdelta. CLFMdelta finds consistent weighting parameters delta for a vector of selected age-to-age chain-ladder factors for a given run-off triangle.

The added functionality was implemented by Dan Murphy, who is the co-author of the paper A Family of Chain-Ladder Factor Models for Selected Link Ratios by Bardis, Majidi, Murphy. You find a more detailed explanation with R code examples on Dan's blog and see also his slides from the CAS spring meeting.

Slides by Dan Murphy

There is definitely R in July

The useR!2013 conference in Albacete, Spain, will commence next Wednesday, 10 July, and on the day before Diego and I will give a googleVis tutorial.

The following Monday, 15 July, the first R in Insurance event will take place at Cass Business School and I am absolutely delighted with the programme and the fact that we are sold out.

On Tuesday, 16 July, the LondonR user group meets in the City, awaiting presentations by Andrie de Vries (Revolution Analytics), Rich Pugh (Mango Solutions) and Hadley Wickham (RStudio).

Finally on Friday, 19 July, the next Cologne R user group meeting is scheduled with two talks: Predicting the Euro/Dollar exchange rates with Twitter (Dietmar Janetzko) and Networks in R using igraph (Afshin Sadeghi).

googleVis 0.4.3 released with improved Geocharts

<$BlogItemBody$>

Next Kölner R User Meeting: 12 April 2013

Quick reminder: The next Cologne R user group meeting is scheduled for this Friday, 12 April 2013. We will discuss cluster analysis and shiny. Further details and the agenda are available on our KölnRUG Meetup site. Please sign up if you would like to come along. Notes from the last Cologne R user group meeting are available here.

Thanks also to Revolution Analytics, who sponsors the Cologne R user group as part of their vector programme.

View Larger Map

ChainLadder 0.1.5-6 released on CRAN

Last week we released version 0.1.5-6 of the ChainLadder package on CRAN. The ChainLadder package provides statistical models, which are typically used for the estimation of outstanding claims reserves in general insurance. The package vignette gives an overview of the package functionality.

Output of plot(MackChainLadder(GenIns))

Since the last CRAN release Dan Murphy added new features to the MackChainLadder function and we fixed a bug in BootChainLadder. Here are he details:

New Features

• The list output of the MackChainLadder function now includes the parameter risk and process risk breakdowns of the total risk estimate for the sum of projected losses across all origin years by development age.
  
• The Mack Method's recursive parameter risk calculation now enables Mack's original two-term formula (the default) and optionally the three-term formula found in Murphy's 1994 paper and in the 2006 paper by Buchwalder, Bühlmann, Merz, and Wüthrich.
  
• A few more Mack Method examples.
  

Bug Fixes

• The phi-scaling factor in BootChainLadder was incorrect. Instead of calculating the number of data items in the upper left triangle as n*(n+1)/2, n*(n-1)/2 was used. Thanks to Thomas Girodot for reporting this bug.
  

Please get in touch if you would like to collaborate or find any issues or bugs.

Join me at the first R in Insurance conference at Cass Business School in London, 15 July 2013.

googleVis 0.4.2 with support for shiny released on CRAN

The new version of googleVis 0.4.2 is now available via CRAN. Many thanks to all who provided feedback on version 0.4.0 and particularly to Sebastian Campbell, John Maindonald and Aonan Zhang. As usual, if you find any issues or bugs, please send us an email or add a line to our online issues log.

With version 0.4.0 we introduced support for googleVis on shiny. See my previous post for more details and examples.

The CRAN release of googleVis 0.4.2 has some further improvements:

• New shiny and FAQ sections in package vignette
• Core charts (e.g. line, area, scatter, bar, column and combo charts) accept now also date variables for the x-axis
  
• Typos in the Stock and Andrew data sets have been fixed
  
• The WorldBank demo uses now the WDI package to download data from the World Bank, see the R code below
  

Read more »

Registration for 'R in Insurance' conference has opened

The registration for the first conference on R in Insurance on Monday 15 July 2013 at Cass Business School in London has opened.

The intended audience of the conference includes both academics and practitioners who are active or interested in the applications of R in insurance.

The 2013 R in Insurance conference builds upon the success of the R in Finance and R/Rmetrics events. We expect invited keynote lectures by:

• Professor Alexander McNeil, Department of Actuarial Science & Statistics
  Heriot-Watt University: Implementing CreditRisk+ in R with the Faster Fourier Transform
• Trevor Maynard, Head of Exposure Management and Reinsurance, Lloyd's: There is an R in Lloyd's

We invite you to submit a one-page abstract for consideration. Both academic and practitioner proposals related to R are encouraged.

The submission deadline for abstracts is 28 March 2013. Please email your abstract (in txt or pdf format) to rinsuranceconference at gmail dot com.

The conference committee consists of:

• Jens Perch Nielsen
• Andreas Tsanakas
• Christophe Dutang
• Markus Gesmann

Details about the registration and abstract submission are given on the new dedicated R in Insurance page at Cass Business School.

The organisers, Andreas Tsanakas and Markus Gesmann, gratefully acknowledge the sponsorship of Mango Solutions.

New Data Scientist role at Lloyd's

Lloyd's of London is looking for a Data Scientist as part of the Analysis team. See Lloyd's career web site for more details.

Next Kölner R User Meeting: 6 February 2013

Quick reminder: The next Cologne R user group meeting is scheduled for tomorrow, 6 February 2013. All details and the agenda are available on the KölnRUG Meetup site. Please sign up if you would like to come along. Notes from the last Cologne R user group meeting are available here.

Thanks also to Revolution Analytics, who are sponsoring the Cologne R user group as part of their vector programme.

View Larger Map

Claims reserving in R: ChainLadder 0.1.5-4 released

Last week we released version 0.1.5-4 of the ChainLadder package on CRAN. The R package provides methods which are typically used in insurance claims reserving. If you are new to R or insurance check out my recent talk on Using R in Insurance.

The chain-ladder method which is a popular method in the insurance industry to forecast future claims payments gave the package its name. However, the ChainLadder package has many other reserving methods and models implemented as well, such as the bootstrap model demonstrated below. It is a great starting point to learn more about stochastic reserving.

Since we published version 0.1.5-2 in March 2012 additional functionality has been added to the package, see the change log, but in particular the vignette has come a long way.

Many thanks to my co-authors Dan Murphy and Wayne Zhang.
Read more »

googleVis 0.3.3 is released and on its way to CRAN

I am very grateful to all who provided feedback over the last two weeks and tested the previous versions 0.3.1 and 0.3.2, which were not released on CRAN.

So, what changed since version 0.3.2?

Not much, but plot.gvis didn't open a browser window when options(gvis.plot.tag) were not set to NULL, but the user explicitly called plot.gvis with tag NULL. Thanks to Sebastian Kranz for reporting this bug. Additionally the vignette has been updated and includes an extended section on knitr.

As usual, you can download the most recent version from our project site. It will take a few days before version 0.3.3 will be available on CRAN for all operating systems.
Read more »

googleVis 0.3.2 is released: Better integration with knitr

After last week's kerfuffle I hope the roll out of googleVis version 0.3.2 will be smooth. To test the water I release this version into the wild here and if it doesn't get shot down in the next days, then I shall try to upload it to CRAN. I am mindful of the CRAN policy, so please get in touch or add comments below if you find any show stoppers.

So what's new in googleVis 0.3.2?

The default behaviour of the functions print.gvis and plot.gvis can be set via options().

Now this doesn't sound too exciting but it can be tremendously helpful when you write Markdown files for knitr. Here is why:
Read more »

googleVis 0.3.0/0.3.1 is released: It's faster!

Version 0.3.0 of the googleVis package for R has been released on CRAN on 20 October 2012. With this version we have been able to speed up the code considerably. The transformation of R data frames into JSON works significantly faster. The execution of the gvisMotionChart function in the World Bank demo is over 35 times faster. Thanks to ideas by Wei Luo and in particular to Sebastian Kranz for providing the code.

Further, the plot function plot.gvis has gained a new argument 'browser'. This argument is passed on to the function browseURL. The 'browser' argument is by default set to the output of getOption("browser") in an interactive session, otherwise to 'false'. This prevents R CMD CHECK trying to open browser windows during the package checking process. Unfortunately this caused an error message under RStudio and RGui on Windows. The argument has been removed again and plot.gvis handles the check if R is running interactively internally. The bug has been fixed in googleVis-0.3.1, not yet available on CRAN, but on our project download page. Thanks to Henrik Bengtsson and Sebastian Kranz for their comments, suggestions and quick response.

Read more »

Next Kölner R User Meeting: 5 October 2012

The next Cologne R user group meeting is scheduled for 5 October 2012. All details and the agenda are available on the KölnRUG Meetup site. Please sign up if you would like to come along. Notes from the last Cologne R user group meeting are available here.

Thanks also to Revolution Analytics, who are sponsoring the Cologne R user group as part of their vector programme.

View Larger Map

googleVis 0.2.17 is released: Displaying earth quake data

The next version of the googleVis package has been released on the project site and CRAN.

This version provides updates to the package vignette and a new example for the gvisMerge function. The new sections of the vignette have been featured on this blog in more detail earlier:

• Using googleVis with knitr (Link to post)
  
• Using Rook with googleVis (Link to post)
  
• Using Reduce with gvisMerge to display several charts on a page (Link to post)
  

Read more »

Reminder: Next Kölner R User Meeting 6 July 2012

This post is a quick reminder that the next Cologne R user group meeting is only one week away. We will meet on 6 July 2012. The meeting will kick off at 18:00 with three short talks at the Institute of Sociology and will continue, even more informal, from 20:00 in a pub (LUX) nearby.

All details are available on the KölnRUG Meetup site. Please sign up if you would like to come along. Notes from the first Cologne R user group meeting are available here.

View Larger Map