[Rd] Default values in control list of function

2011-06-25 Thread Prof. John C Nash
In building a function for a package, I'd like to set the defaults in a control list, e.g., makeg<-function(parameters, eps = 1.0e-7, control=list(showwork=TRUE, rubbish=1.0e+101)){ etc. } This does not provide showwork or rubbish within the function if control() is not fully specified.

Re: [Rd] return(); was Suggestions for "good teaching" packages

2011-02-16 Thread Prof. John C Nash
I tend to code with return(), at least in development, because I've once stepped in the cowpad of ans<- list() then attr(ans ) and forgot to do another ans so got only part of what I wanted. Perhaps its just my thinking style, but I agree with some others who suggest that it

Re: [Rd] Google Summer of Code 2011 - credit where it is due

2011-02-15 Thread Prof. John C Nash
In my reminder that GSoC project proposals are requested (to R wiki developers' projects page for GSoC 2011), I mentioned that Dirk Eddelbuettel had acted as leader for the R Foundation activity on GSoC prior to handing the torch to Claudia Beleites and I for this year. I should have mentioned t

[Rd] Google Summer of Code 2011

2011-02-15 Thread Prof. John C Nash
The 2011 Google Summer of Code will soon be open for organizations to submit potential projects for which students may apply (with detailed plans) for funding. We have some proposals in process at http://rwiki.sciviews.org/doku.php?id=developers:projects:gsoc2011 Note that projects do need to h

[Rd] Competing with one's own work

2010-12-03 Thread Prof. John C Nash
No, this is not about Rcpp, but a comment in that overly long discussion raised a question that has been in my mind for a while. This is that one may have work that is used in R in the base functionality and there are improvements that should be incorporated. For me, this concerns the BFGS, Nel

Re: [Rd] [R] DBLEPR?

2010-11-17 Thread Prof. John C Nash
Thanks for comments from several folk, fix from Doug Bates and start to finding new email for ucminf maintainer. Summary of responses: DBLEPR and its relations are briefly mentioned but with no or minimal examples in Writing R Extensions as well as Venables and Ripley book. I should have emphas

Re: [Rd] DBLEPR?

2010-11-16 Thread Prof. John C Nash
My reaction is leaning heavily towards "Virtuoso!" as opposed to "Show Off!". Thanks very much. JN On 11/16/2010 05:39 PM, Douglas Bates wrote: > Try this. > > On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 4:06 PM, Prof. John C Nash wrote: >> We've tried to contact Sti

Re: [Rd] DBLEPR?

2010-11-16 Thread Prof. John C Nash
. JN On 11/16/2010 04:52 PM, Douglas Bates wrote: > On Tue, Nov 16, 2010 at 2:35 PM, Prof. John C Nash wrote: >> I normally see digest once per day, but got msg from Doug Bates so >> responding with context. > >> UCMINF is a package on CRAN that implements a variable me

Re: [Rd] DBLEPR?

2010-11-16 Thread Prof. John C Nash
I normally see digest once per day, but got msg from Doug Bates so responding with context. UCMINF is a package on CRAN that implements a variable metric minimizer. It does quite well on unconstrained problems. Stig Mortensen packaged the Fortran version for R, but is not at moment responding t

Re: [Rd] BLAS benchmarks on R 2.12.0 and related performance issues

2010-11-02 Thread Prof. John C Nash
This thread pointed out that the "plain vanilla" library for linear algebra outperformed the fancy ones for the original poster -- and he had mentioned this, but still got "you ought to " advice that was inappropriate and ignored his stated experience. I've been surprised sometimes myself wi

Re: [Rd] iteration count in optim()

2010-08-06 Thread Prof. John C Nash
Date: Fri, 6 Aug 2010 11:14:37 +0200 From: Christophe Dutang To: r-devel@r-project.org Subject: [Rd] on the optim function Message-ID: <7e004a07-03e1-4ded-a506-6c564edb6...@gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Dear useRs, I have just discovered that the R optim function does

[Rd] transpose of complex matrices in R

2010-07-30 Thread Prof. John C Nash
When one is working with complex matrices, "transpose" very nearly always means *Hermitian* transpose, that is, A[i,j] <- Conj(A[j,i]). One often writes A^* for the Hermitian transpose. I believe that I have actually (many years ago) used a true complex transpose, but I agree that one more of

[Rd] Location of source code for readline()

2010-05-30 Thread Prof. John C Nash
A few days ago on R-help I asked about a cross-platform timeout version of readline(). Some suggestions, but only partial joy so far. I can get the Gnu bash 'read -t ...' to work in Windows by using the 'bash -c ' construct, but then R's system() function does not seem to allow this to pass thr

Re: [Rd] R CMD check issue with soft-linked directory

2010-03-10 Thread Prof. John C Nash
Good catch Simon. Changed fstab to force exec on mount of the drive in question and things worked. Thanks, JN Simon Urbanek wrote: On Mar 10, 2010, at 12:43 , Prof. John C Nash wrote: I've been having some strange problems with R CMD check in the last couple of days, but now beli

[Rd] R CMD check issue with soft-linked directory

2010-03-10 Thread Prof. John C Nash
I've been having some strange problems with R CMD check in the last couple of days, but now believe I have localized the issue. I had been running Ubuntu Hardy on one drive and then upgraded to Jaunty, but put Jaunty on a different drive. I continue to be able to boot Hardy when I wish. I soft-

[Rd] Idea for install.packages on (certain) linux distributions

2010-03-02 Thread Prof. John C Nash
Some time ago, I had some email discussion with Dirk E. about putting a front-end on install.packages to first look at the debian repositories for R and use them before trying to install from source. The code for this would not be very large. As Uwe points out in another posting, the issue then

[Rd] [R] R CMD check when package directory is symlinked

2009-12-16 Thread Prof. John C Nash
I've done a couple of searches and not found mention of the issue below, though some older scripts mention getting absolute paths for R CMD check. If the issue is "new" or unfamiliar I'll be happy to follow up and document it, but suspect it is in some sense already known and I've missed the rig

Re: [Rd] Buglet in optim() SANN

2009-10-25 Thread Prof. John C Nash
e-based methods, and ‘500’ for ‘"Nelder-Mead"’. > For ‘"SANN"’ ‘maxit’ gives the total number of function > evaluations. There is no other stopping criterion. >^^^^^^^^ > Defaults to ‘1000

[Rd] Advice on how to arrange fix of buglet

2009-10-22 Thread Prof. John C Nash
Recently I reported a small bug in optim's SANN method failing to report that it had exceeded the maximum function evaluation limit in the convergence code. This is a small enough matter that I was reluctant to create a full-blown bug report. Indeed in the optimx package Ravi Varadhan and I h

[Rd] Buglet in optim() SANN

2009-10-20 Thread Prof. John C Nash
I think SANN method in optim() is failing to report that it has not converged. Here is an example genrose.f<- function(x, gs=NULL){ # objective function ## One generalization of the Rosenbrock banana valley function (n parameters) n <- length(x) if(is.null(gs)) { gs=100.0 }

[Rd] Why license filtering is important (was non-GPL ...)

2009-09-12 Thread Prof. John C Nash
Using the acronym "GPL" in comments on the management of package repositories led the discussion well away from the issues I wanted to shed light upon, so I have changed the subject tag. Examples of my concerns: 1) I use a package with a non-free component and learn how to work with it effici

Re: [Rd] Non-GPL packages for R

2009-09-11 Thread Prof. John C Nash
The responses to my posting yesterday seem to indicate more consensus than I expected: 1) CRAN should be restricted to GPL-equivalent licensed packages 2) r-forge could be left "buyer beware" using DESCRIPTION information 3) We may want a specific repository for restricted packages (RANC?) How t

[Rd] Non-GPL packages for R

2009-09-10 Thread Prof. John C Nash
Subject: Non-GPL packages for R Packages that are not licensed in a way that permits re-distribution on CRAN are frequently a source of comment and concern on R-help and other lists. A good example of this problem is the Rdonlp2 package that has caused a lot of annoyance for a number of optimiza

Re: [Rd] identical(0, -0)

2009-08-08 Thread Prof. John C Nash
I'll save space and not include previous messages. My 2 cents: At the very least the documentation needs a fix. If it is easy to do, then Ted Harding's suggestion of a switch (default OFF) to check for sign difference would be sensible. I would urge inclusion in the documentation of the +0, -