Tag: package

Tailor Your Tables with stargazer: New Features for LaTeX and Text Output

Guest post by Marek Hlavac

Since its first introduction on this blog, stargazer, a package for turning R statistical output into beautiful LaTeX and ASCII text tables, has made a great deal of progress. Compared to available alternatives (such as apsrtable or texreg), the latest version (4.0) of stargazer supports the broadest range of model objects. In particular, it can create side-by-side regression tables from statistical model objects created by packages AER, betareg, dynlm, eha, ergm, gee, gmm, lme4, MASS, mgcv, nlme, nnet, ordinal, plm, pscl, quantreg, relevent, rms, robustbase, spdep, stats, survey, survival and Zelig.  You can install stargazer from CRAN in the usual way:

install.packages(“stargazer”)

New Features: Text Output and Confidence Intervals

In this blog post, I would like to draw attention to two new features of stargazer that make the package even more useful:

  • stargazer can now produce ASCII text output, in addition to LaTeX code. As a result, users can now create beautiful tables that can easily be inserted into Microsoft Word documents, published on websites, or sent via e-mail. Sharing your regression results has never been easier. Users can also use this feature to preview their LaTeX tables before they use the stargazer-generated code in their .tex documents.
  • In addition to standard errors, stargazer can now report confidence intervals at user-specified confidence levels (with a default of 95 percent). This possibility might be especially appealing to researchers in public health and biostatistics, as the reporting of confidence intervals is very common in these disciplines.

In the reproducible example presented below, I demonstrate these two new features in action.

 

Reproducible Example

I begin by creating model objects for two Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) models (using the lm() command) and a probit model (using glm() ). Note that I use data from attitude, one of the standard data frames that should be provided with your installation of R.

## 2 OLS models

linear.1 <- lm(rating ~ complaints + privileges + learning + raises + critical, data=attitude)
linear.2 <- lm(rating ~ complaints + privileges + learning, data=attitude)

## create an indicator dependent variable, and run a probit model

attitude$high.rating <- (attitude$rating > 70)
probit.model <- glm(high.rating ~ learning + critical + advance, data=attitude, family = binomial(link = "probit"))

I then use stargazer to create a ‘traditional’ LaTeX table with standard errors. With the sole exception of the argument no.space – which I use to save space by removing all empty lines in the table – both the command call and the resulting table should look familiar from earlier versions of the package:

stargazer(linear.1, linear.2, probit.model, title="Regression Results", align=TRUE, dep.var.labels=c("Overall Rating","High Rating"), covariate.labels=c("Handling of Complaints","No Special Privileges", "Opportunity to Learn","Performance-Based Raises","Too Critical","Advancement"), omit.stat=c("LL","ser","f"), no.space=TRUE)

table_example_1

Continue reading "Tailor Your Tables with stargazer: New Features for LaTeX and Text Output"

Updating R (on Windows) through a menu-bar: installr 0.9 released on CRAN

In preparation for the upcoming release of R 3.0.0, a new release 0.9 of installr is now on CRAN.

The package can be installed and loaded using:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) {
install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

The new version includes various bug fixes (as can be seen in the NEWS file) and new functions and features. The most user visible feature is that from now on, whenever loading installr in the Rgui, it will add a new menu-bar for updating your R version (the menu is removed when the package is detached).

installr_menubar_updateR

When choosing to update R, a new GUI based system will guide you step by step through the updating process. It will first check if a newer version of R is available, if so, it will offer to show the latest NEWS of that release, download and install the new version, and copy/move your packages from the previous library folder, to the one in the new installation. If you have a global library folder, you can simply stop the updating once your new R is installed, and continue as you would otherwise (in the future, I intend to update the package to also allow it to deal with people using a global library folder).

installr_updateR_noupdate_needed

(for using {installr} to update R through R terminal, see my previous post: Updating R from R (on Windows) – using the {installr} package)

Another new feature is the “installr()” function (which can also be run through the menubar), running it will open a window with a list of software you can download and install using the installr package (From Rtools and RStudio to pandoc and MikTeX).

installr_installr_function

I hope you’ll enjoy this new release, and as always – please let me know in the comments (or via e-mail) if you come across any bugs or have suggestions for new features.

Updating R from R (on Windows) – using the {installr} package

Upgrading R on Windows is not easy. While the R FAQ offer guidelines, some users may prefer to simply run a command in order to upgrade their R to the latest version. That is what the new {installr} package is all about.

The {installr} package offers a set of R functions for the installation and updating of software (currently, only on Windows OS), with a special focus on R itself. To update R, you can simply run the following code:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) {
install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

# using the package:
updateR() # this will start the updating process of your R installation.  It will check for newer versions, and if one is available, will guide you through the decisions you'd need to make.

Running this function will perform the following steps:

  • Check what is the latest R version. If the current installed R version is up-to-date, the function ends (and returns FALSE)

  • If a newer version of R is available, you will be asked if to review the NEWS of the latest R version – in order to decide if to install the
    newest R or not.

  • If you wish it – the function will download and install the latest R version. (you will need to press the "next" buttons on your own)

  • Once the installation is done, you should press "any-key", and the function will proceed with copying all of your packages from your old (well, current) R installation, into your newer R installation.

  • You can then erase all of the packages in your old R installation.

  • After your packages are moved (and the old ones possibly erased), you will get the option to update all of your packages in the new version of R.

  • Lastely – you can open the new Rgui and close the current session of your old R. (This is a bit buggy in version 0.8, but has been fixed in version 0.8.1)

If you know you wish to upgrade R, and you want the packages moved (not copied, MOVED), you can simply run:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) { install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

updateR(F, T, T, F, T, F, T) # install, move, update.package, quit R.

Since the various steps are broken into individual functions, you can also pick and choose what to run using the relevant function:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) { install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

# step by step functions:
check.for.updates.R() # tells you if there is a new version of R or not.
install.R() # download and run the latest R installer
copy.packages.between.libraries() # copy your packages to the newest R installation from the one version before it (if ask=T, it will ask you between which two versions to perform the copying)

If you like using the global library system, you can run the following in the old R:

# installing/loading the package:
if(!require(installr)) { install.packages("installr"); require(installr)} #load / install+load installr

updateR(F, T, F, F, F, F, T) # only install R (if there is a newer version), and quits it.

And then run the following in the new version of R:

source("https://www.r-statistics.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/upgrading-R-on-windows.r.txt")
New.R.RunMe()

The {installr} package also offers functions for installing various other software on Windows. These functions include: install.pandoc (which was mentioned on this blog recently), install.git, install.Rtools, install.MikTeX, install.RStudio, and a general install.URL and install.packages.zip functions. You can see these further explained in the package’s Reference manual.

Feature requests, bug reports – and your help in improving the package

You can see the latest version of installr on github, where you can also submit bug reports (you may also just leave a comment in this post). Since this is my first R package, I might have (e.g: probably have) missed something here or there. So any comment on how to improve my code/documentation/R-fu, will be most welcomed (here or on github).

If this type of coding is fun/easy for you, you can help me improve this package on github. Cool new features I think may be added (by me or others) are:

  • Add an uninstall.R function – to remove the old R version.
  • Add more support for upgrading R for people who uses a global library for their packages.
  • Add support for Linux and Mac! This one I am less likely to do on my own – and would love to see someone else extend my code to other operation systems.
  • GUI – add a menu based option for running updateR. Something like help->”check for updates” would be great. (p.s: this idea came from Yihui Xie)
  • add even more install.software functions. If you have functions for which you’d like to be able to easily install them – just let me know and it could be included in future releases.

Thanks

Final note, I would like to thank the many people who have developed WONDERFUL tools for making R package development possible (and even somewhat fast), on Windows. These include Prof. Brian Ripley and Duncan Murdoch for Rtools, also Uwe Ligges for his work on CRAN, Hadley Wickham for devtools (in general, and for its documentation), Yihui Xie for roxygen2, JJ and others in the RStudio team for RStudio, the people behind git and github, and more. There are probably more things I can thank these people for, and many more people I should thank, but I can’t figure who you are probably (feel free to e-mail me, I appreciate you work even if it is not clear to me your are behind it).

Generation of E-Learning Exams in R for Moodle, OLAT, etc.

(Guest post by Achim Zeileis)
Development of the R package exams for automatic generation of (statistical) exams in R started in 2006 and version 1 was published in JSS by Grün and Zeileis (2009). It was based on standalone Sweave exercises, that can be combined into exams, and then rendered into different kinds of PDF output (exams, solutions, self-study materials, etc.). Now, a major revision of the package has been released that extends the capabilities and adds support for learning management systems. It is still based on the same type of
Sweave files for each exercise but can also render them into output formats like HTML (with various options for displaying mathematical content) and XML specifications for online exams in learning management systems such as Moodle or OLAT. Supplementary files such as graphics or data are
handled automatically. Here, I give a brief overview of the new capabilities. A detailed discussion is in the working paper by Zeileis, Umlauf, and Leisch (2012) that is also contained in the package as a vignette.
Continue reading “Generation of E-Learning Exams in R for Moodle, OLAT, etc.”

How to load the {rJava} package after the error "JAVA_HOME cannot be determined from the Registry"

In case you tried loading a package that depends on the {rJava} package (by Simon Urbanek), you might came across the following error:

Loading required package: rJava
library(rJava)
Error : .onLoad failed in loadNamespace() for ‘rJava’, details:
call: fun(libname, pkgname)
error: JAVA_HOME cannot be determined from the Registry

The error tells us that there is no entry in the Registry that tells R where Java is located. It is most likely that Java was not installed (or that the registry is corrupt).

This error is often resolved by installing a Java version (i.e. 64-bit Java or 32-bit Java) that fits to the type of R version that you are using (i.e. 64-bit R or 32-bit R). This problem can easily effect Windows 7 users, since they might have installed a version of Java that is different than the version of R they are using.

Note that it is necessary to ‘manually download and install’ the 64 bit version of JAVA. By default, the download page gives a 32 bit version .

You can pick the exact version of Java you wish to install from this link. If you might (for some reason) work on both versions of R, you can install both version of Java (Installing the “Java Runtime Environment” is probably good enough for your needs).
(Source: Uwe Ligges)

Other possible solutions is trying to re-install rJava.

If that doesn’t work, you could also manually set the directory of your Java location by setting it before loading the library:

Sys.setenv(JAVA_HOME='C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7') # for 64-bit version
Sys.setenv(JAVA_HOME='C:\\Program Files (x86)\\Java\\jre7') # for 32-bit version
library(rJava)

(Source: “nograpes” from Stackoverflow, which also describes the find.java in the rJava:::.onLoad function)

Do more with dates and times in R with lubridate 1.1.0

This is a guest post by Garrett Grolemund (mentored by Hadley Wickham)

Lubridate is an R package that makes it easier to work with dates and times. The newest release of lubridate (v 1.1.0) comes with even more tools and some significant changes over past versions. Below is a concise tour of some of the things lubridate can do for you. At the end of this post, I list some of the differences between lubridate (v 0.2.4) and lubridate (v 1.1.0). If you are an old hand at lubridate, please read this section to avoid surprises!

Lubridate was created by Garrett Grolemund and Hadley Wickham.

Parsing dates and times

Getting R to agree that your data contains the dates and times you think it does can be a bit tricky. Lubridate simplifies that. Identify the order in which the year, month, and day appears in your dates. Now arrange “y”, “m”, and “d” in the same order. This is the name of the function in lubridate that will parse your dates. For example,

library(lubridate)
ymd("20110604"); mdy("06-04-2011"); dmy("04/06/2011")
## "2011-06-04 UTC"
## "2011-06-04 UTC"
## "2011-06-04 UTC"

Parsing functions automatically handle a wide variety of formats and separators, which simplifies the parsing process.

If your date includes time information, add h, m, and/or s to the name of the function. ymd_hms() is probably the most common date time format. To read the dates in with a certain time zone, supply the official name of that time zone in the tz argument.

arrive <- ymd_hms("2011-06-04 12:00:00", tz = "Pacific/Auckland")
## "2011-06-04 12:00:00 NZST"
leave <- ymd_hms("2011-08-10 14:00:00", tz = "Pacific/Auckland")
## "2011-08-10 14:00:00 NZST"

Setting and Extracting information

Extract information from date times with the functions second(), minute(), hour(), day(), wday(), yday(), week(), month(), year(), and tz(). You can also use each of these to set (i.e, change) the given information. Notice that this will alter the date time. wday() and month() have an optional label argument, which replaces their numeric output with the name of the weekday or month.

second(arrive)
## 0
second(arrive) <- 25
arrive
## "2011-06-04 12:00:25 NZST"
second(arrive) <- 0
wday(arrive)
## 7
wday(arrive, label = TRUE)
## Sat

Time Zones

There are two very useful things to do with dates and time zones. First, display the same moment in a different time zone. Second, create a new moment by combining a given clock time with a new time zone. These are accomplished by with_tz() and force_tz().

For example, I spent last summer researching in Auckland, New Zealand. I arranged to meet with my advisor, Hadley, over skype at 9:00 in the morning Auckland time. What time was that for Hadley who was back in Houston, TX?

meeting <- ymd_hms("2011-07-01 09:00:00", tz = "Pacific/Auckland")
## "2011-07-01 09:00:00 NZST"
with_tz(meeting, "America/Chicago")
## "2011-06-30 16:00:00 CDT"

So the meetings occurred at 4:00 Hadley’s time (and the day before no less). Of course, this was the same actual moment of time as 9:00 in New Zealand. It just appears to be a different day due to the curvature of the Earth.

What if Hadley made a mistake and signed on at 9:00 his time? What time would it then be my time?

mistake <- force_tz(meeting, "America/Chicago")
## "2011-07-01 09:00:00 CDT"
with_tz(mistake, "Pacific/Auckland")
## "2011-07-02 02:00:00 NZST"

His call would arrive at 2:00 am my time! Luckily he never did that.

Continue reading "Do more with dates and times in R with lubridate 1.1.0"

Animation video of rgl in action

Duncan Murdoch just posted a youtube video presenting an animation clip of a 3d rgl object.

Duncan even went further and wrote an explanation on how he made the video:

here are the steps I used:
1.  Design a shape to be displayed, and then play with the animation functions to make it change over time.  Use play3d to do it live in R, movie3d to write the individual frames of the movie to .png files.
2.  Use the ffmpeg package (not an R package, a separate project at http://ffmpeg.org) to convert the .png files to an .mp4 file.  The individual frames totalled about 1 GB; the compressed movie is about 45 MB.
3.  Upload to Youtube.  I’m not a musician, so I had to use one of their licensed background tracks, I couldn’t write my own.  I spent a lot of time picking one and then adjusting the timing of the video to compensate.  Each render/upload cycle at full resolution took about an hour and a half.  It’s a lot faster to render in a smaller window with fewer frames per second, but it’s still tedious.   It’s easier to synchronize if you actually have a copy of the music locally, but Youtube doesn’t let you download their music.  So the timing isn’t perfect, but it’s good enough for me!

Wonderful work Duncan, thanks for sharing!