This post relates my experience with calling C++ from R by writing an R module from scratch and by the inline module.
Monthly Archives: June 2011
Doubly periodic functions
Functions like sine and cosine are periodic. For example, sin(x + 2πn) = sin(x) for all x and any integer n, and so the period of sine is 2π. But what happens if you look at sine or cosine as…
It takes more than a better mouse trap
Emerson was wrong. The world will not beat a path to your door just because you build a better mouse trap. No busy, overstressed, fire-putting-out, content-with-the-product-they-have-now person really wants to hear from you. Even when you do build a better…
High-brow limericks
Philosophy Said Plato: “These things that we feel Are not ontologically real, But just the excresence Of numinous essence Our senses can never reveal.” via Futility Closet Calculus The integral z-squared dz From one to the cube root of 3…
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Weekend miscellany
Average New York City sky color every five minutes Photography tips for idiots The biggest changes in C++ 2011 Why writing software is not like engineering First world problem rap
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Fifteen interviews
Seven Nine people I have interviewed: Rick Richter, CIO of Food for the Hungry Eric Floehr, owner of ForecastWatch Frederick Brooks, computer pioneer and author Robert Ghrist, applied topologist Cliff Pickover, mathematician and author Dan Bricklin, software developer and author…
Square root interview question
Imagine some of the answers you might get to “What is the square root of 101?” First, three answers that suggest an interviewee is not strong with math. What’s a square root? You gotta calculator? 101 doesn’t have a square…
Platform lock-in
From Baron Schwartz speaking at the O’Reilly Media MySQL Conference: We talk about proprietary vendor lock-in, but in many cases the reality is that anyone who uses any platform, even an open source one, ends up being locked-in to some…
Posted in Computing, Software development
How to fit an elephant
John von Neumann famously said With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk. By this he meant that one should not be impressed when a complex model fits a data…
Software under-represents reality
From Jaron Lanier: I love software, but software always under-represents reality. Reality has this depth to it and potential for surprise and subtlety that you just can’t get from software. Related posts: The bipolar Internet Underwhelmed with progress Make something…
An unexpected Father's Day card
As an undergraduate I was part of an honors program called Dean’s Scholars. I have a T-shirt from a Dean’s Scholars reunion several years ago that my wife doesn’t appreciate as much as I do. She thinks I shouldn’t wear…
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A surprise with Emacs and Office 2007
I had a little surprise when I tried to open an Excel file from Emacs. I was using dired, a sort of file explorer inside Emacs. I expected one of two things to happen. Maybe Emacs would know to launch…
Weekend miscellany
Work The risk of working hard Why people want you to march to the beat of their drummer Software development The future of C++ Optimizing higher-level programming languages Math Mathematical background for computer science Course in pseudorandomness Bizarre A 16th…
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Write the other way
This notebook made me think of the quote from William Carlos Williams: “If they give you lined paper, write the other way.”
Impure math
When Samuel Hansen said in his interview “You’re not a pure mathematician” I agreed without thinking, but later the statement bothered me a little. I know what he meant: considering the two categories of pure math and applied math, you’d…
