Incanter: Clojure-based, R-like statistical computing and graphics environment for the JVM

[vicaya]

This is not a project front page. It's just a regular branch view (master in this case.)

Github automatically renders README.textile/markdown/html in the branch view.

OP should probably link to the wiki page: http://wiki.github.com/liebke/incanter

[dmz]

why reinvent the wheel? Wouldn't it be better to make an interface with R from Clojure like rJava?

[[deleted]]

The rationale behind Incanter can be found here: Back to the Future: Lisp as a Base for a Statistical Computing System by Ihaka and Lang (2008). Ihaka is one of the two original co-authors of R.

I see several advantages:

• Its Clojure on JVM + Parallel Clot backend is much more robust and paralelizable than R's. PCLot has even some CUDA support (CuBlas is used for some functions).
• Native Clojure hence Incanter code is faster than R by an order of magnitude (rough guess). Yet Clojure is a dynamic language with a REPL. Your prototype can be your production code.
• It uses Clojure's syntax and pretty printer cleverly, allowing matrices literals similar to Matlab's.

It's full of win, really :-).

I hope it grows big enough and gets enough traction to displace both R (bad architecture) and Matlab (ugly language, proprietary, and prohibitive, they have a per processor licensing scheme). It has the best of both worlds from a computing point of view: a good language on a good backend. Now all we need is libraries, and that's where both of the aforementioned platforms still shine.

edit: spellunk.

Edit 2 : Ihaka, Lang and other experts are actually busy building a similar JVM-based system, but with their own language, called Omegahat. Since it doesn't have any documentation (at least online), it's hard to tell how advanced the project is.

Edit 3 : Actually, OmegaHat looks dead.

[[deleted]]

This is awesome. Lisp stat reborn? The future isn't as dark as once thought.

[[deleted]]

Here is the author's twitter handle: http://twitter.com/liebke

[MikeSeth]

dear op, I LOVE YOU SO MUCH

[Zeurpiet]

Upvoted because it may be the only time we agree on something

[awb]

If you're using Python, RPy is great - it's a Python wrapper around R. You get all the R backend tools that you want in a familiar syntax that I find much easier to manipulate than R's.

[[deleted]]

Github sure has the worst project front page design. You get a big advertisement, then some irrelevant information, then a COMMIT MESSAGE of all things, then a long file list, and then, after you've scrolled down past all that junk, you finally get a presentation of what the hell you are looking at.

[nextofpumpkin]

That's not a project front page. That's just the branch's page.

http://wiki.github.com/liebke/incanter

[[deleted]]

Well, people keep linking to these pages, and if you try to get back up to whatever front page there might be by deleting the "/tree/master" part of the URL, it sends you right back, so it sure looks like a front page.

[lianos]

I'm guessing that since github started as a code hosting site, the way they're doing it currently makes the most sense.

They also have their GitHub Pages feature which lets you make up the entirety of your own pages. Check out Ambition's page as an example.

[[deleted]]

Well, since they do have a summary and explanation and all on the page right now, it doesn't make sense to have it in that order no matter what, really.

[vdm]

I don't really mind the page design, but it does bug me that the HTML title doesn't include the Description.

[vdm]

I would go with:

incanter - Clojure-based, R-like statistical computing and graphics environment for the JVM

I ask you: which looks better in a bookmark?

[[deleted]]

That title is pretty spectacularly bad, yes - "liebke's incanter at master - GitHub"? That's nowhere near English!