We've written about BIG data before and while some reckon it's sexy, you better roll up your sleeves because you'll invariably need to do a lot of 'janitorial' (a.k.a. shit) work first!
Ron Sandland recently wrote about the new phenomenon of 'big data' - weighing up the benefits and concerns. Terry Speed reflected on the same issue in a talk earlier this year inGothenburg, Sweeden noting that this is nothing new to statisticians. So what's all the fuss about? Here's another take on the 'big data' bandwagon.
The first documented user-contributed R package was vioplot(for generating Violin plots) on October 29, 2005 (click here for a chronological listing) . As of today, there are 5,843 R packages. The plot below shows the exponential growth in user-contributed packages. From 2005 to 2012, packages were being added at the rate of about 4 per month. Since 2012 that has jumped to around 168 per month.
At this rate there will be over 10,000 R packages in 2 years time!