Posts

 

Introducing multideploy: Streamline file deployments across multiple repositories

The Challenge of Managing Many Repositories
r
github
devops
If you’re managing multiple GitHub repositories, you’ve probably encountered the frustration of maintaining consistent files across them all. Whether it’s standardizing CI…
Mar 21, 2025
James Balamuta

 

From Experiment to Action: R Package CRAN Submission GitHub Action

A follow-up to our experimental CRAN submission workflow
r
github-actions
cran
automation
A week ago, I shared an experimental workflow for automating CRAN submissions through GitHub Actions. Today, I’m excited to announce that this experiment has evolved into a…
Mar 10, 2025
James Balamuta

 

Julia Comes to Google Colab

Native Julia Support with GPU and TPU Access Now Available
julia
google
colaboratory
data-science
As a long-time Julia lurker, I was thrilled to discover that Google Colab now offers native Julia support through IJulia! The work to incorporate Julia into Colab was led by …
Mar 9, 2025
James Balamuta

 

First Steps toward Automating CRAN Submissions with GitHub Actions

Making CRAN submissions more like PyPI publishing
r
github-actions
cran
r&d
automation
This post describes an experimental workflow that automates CRAN submissions using GitHub Actions. While not yet a proper GitHub Action, it demonstrates the potential for…
Mar 3, 2025
James Balamuta

 

Automating Library Updates with GitHub Actions

Update C++ Library Dependencies in R Packages
github
github-actions
r
r-package
c++
gitlab
automation
bandicoot
There is an older version of this post discussing how to automate dependency updates using GitHub Actions when the upstream dependency is on GitHub. This post focuses on the…
Feb 26, 2025
James Balamuta

 

Posit’s New Brand YML Specification for Themes Makes Its Debut!

Shiny for Python leads the way with the first implementation of this powerful brand system
shiny-python
design-systems
web
Brand consistency is a requirement for any organization to maintain a professional image and build trust with its audience. Whether you’re managing a corporate identity…
Nov 10, 2024
James Balamuta

 

Next Generation Data Science Education with WebAssembly Technologies

education
python
webassembly
quarto
Creating interactive, explorable data science education materials using WebAssembly
Nov 5, 2024
James Balamuta

 

Handling CRAN Requirements for Web API R Packages

programming
r
When developing R packages that interact with web APIs, care is required due to CRAN’s policy on internet connectivity. If your not careful, your package could fail CRAN…
Nov 2, 2024
James Balamuta

 

Scraping Dynamic Websites with R and Chromote

video
r
While teaching web scraping this week, a student challenged me to scrape weather data from Windy.com. This led to creating a video demonstrating how to handle both static…
Oct 29, 2024
James Balamuta

 

Introducing Quartize: Streamline Your Quarto Blog Workflow in VS Code

vsx
vs-code
positron-ide
Managing a Quarto blog just got easier. Today, I’m excited to introduce {quartize}, a Visual Studio Code extension that simplifies the process of creating and organizing…
Oct 27, 2024
James Balamuta

 

HTML Table to DataFrame Converter

tools
data-science
web-development
I’m excited to introduce a new web-based language agnostic tool that simplifies the process of converting web-based tabular data into code that could be used to importing…
Oct 22, 2024
James Balamuta

 

Converting FontAwesome CSS to Lua with R: A Unicode Adventure

quarto
lua
r
As a die-hard Quarto fan, you often find yourself needing to bridge gaps between different technologies. Recently, I faced an interesting challenge: converting FontAwesome’s…
Oct 19, 2024
James Balamuta

 

Shiny Assistant: A Game-Changer for Shiny Development

shinylive
shiny
r
python
I’m incredibly excited about Posit’s latest announcement: Shiny Assistant! This AI-powered tool represents a significant shift in how we approach dashboard and application…
Oct 10, 2024
James Balamuta

 

Creating Desktop Shortcuts for Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, and iCloud on macOS using symlinks

mac
cloud
storage
symlink
terminal
With the ever growing amount of cloud storage provides, I seemly have a folder for each one. I wanted to have all of these folders alongside of the local HD accessible from…
Oct 8, 2024
James Balamuta

 

surreal v0.0.1 Released

software-releases
r-package
The surreal package (CRAN, GitHub) allows you to hide secret messages or images in your data that can only be revealed when you plot the residuals of a linear model. It’s a…
Sep 12, 2024
James Balamuta

 

ucimlrepo v0.0.2 Released - Graceful Speedy Data

software-releases
r-package
The ucimlrepo package has just received it’s second release, v0.0.2! This release focuses on improving the user experience and avoiding the wraith of CRAN when fetching…
Sep 2, 2024
James Balamuta

 

ucimlrepo v0.0.1 Released

software-releases
r-package
The ucimlrepo package (CRAN, GitHub) is now available on CRAN. The package provides an interface to download datasets from the UCI Machine Learning Repository directly into…
Jul 27, 2024
James Balamuta

 

quarto-webr v0.4.2 Released - A Change Is Gonna Come!

software-releases
quarto
webr
Leading into the UseR 2024! Conference, we’re releasing quarto-webr v0.4.2. This release contains a number of new features and bug fixes. The most notable change is the…
Jun 24, 2024
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Dynamic Interactions with WebAssembly in R and Python

webassembly
r
webr
python
pyodide
quarto
talks
I recently had the pleasure of giving guest lectures on “Dynamic Interactions for R and Python” for Stanford University’s STATS 352 Spring 2024 course. In these sessions, I…
May 16, 2024
James Balamuta

 

quarto-webr v0.4.1 Released - Vivid Montage!

software-releases
quarto
webr
After taking a brief break to work on releasing the {quarto-pyodide} extension, we’re back with a new release of {quarto-webr}. In version 0.4.1, we’ve focused on upgrading…
Mar 25, 2024
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.21.1.1 Released - Numerical Fix for L-BFGS!

software-releases
r-package
For the first update in 2024, the Ensmallen Development Team has issued a fix for numerical precision issues in the small-gradient L-BFGS scaling factor computations.
Feb 17, 2024
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.4.0 Released - Ball of Yarn!

software-releases
quarto
webr
We’re pleased to bring you the latest release of the quarto-webr extension, v0.4.0. This release brings an entirely new internal backend that improves the reliability and…
Feb 5, 2024
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.21.0.1 Released - Callback tweaks!

software-releases
r-package
In the second update of 2023, Ensmallen Development Team has focused on clarifying the return values for different callback types and fixing the return types of callbacks.…
Nov 28, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.3.9 Released - Zoom-Zoom!

software-releases
quarto
webr
And we’re back with a new update to quarto-webr version 0.3.9! We’ve released a new version of the extension that deprecated the need for webr-worker.js and webr-serviceworke…
Nov 16, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.3.8 Released - New Coat of Paint!

software-releases
quarto
webr
In quarto-webr version 0.3.8, we have made a number of changes to the extension to improve the user experience and make it easier to use. We’ve added a new autoload-packages …
Nov 13, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.3.7 Released - Mutex On, Mutex Off!

software-releases
quarto
webr
We’re pleased to announce the release of quarto-webr version 0.3.7! This release brings a number of new features, bug fixes, and documentation updates to the extension. Most…
Oct 16, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.20.0.1 Released - New Active CMAES Implementation and Fixes!

software-releases
r-package
After over a year of silence, Ensmallen Development Team has released a new update! In this release, the team has added a new optimizer, Active CMAES, and fixed a few bugs.…
Oct 3, 2023
James Balamuta

 

quarto-webr v0.3.6 Released - Ready, Set, Run!

software-releases
quarto
webr
With Posit::conf(2023L) Conference now in the rearview mirror, we’re excited to announce the release of quarto-webr version 0.3.6! This release brings a series of…
Sep 24, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.3.5 Released - Rocking the Monaco!

software-releases
quarto
webr
The latest version of quarto-webr extension v0.3.5 comes just before we have our first public talk on the extension at the Posit::conf(2023L) Conference! This release brings…
Sep 17, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.3.2 Released - Rocking the Monaco!

software-releases
quarto
webr
We’re excited to announce the release of quarto-webr v0.3.2! This release is more of an internal maintenance release to improve quarto-webr functionality with Safari and…
Sep 13, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.3.1 Released - Maintenance Release: Upgrade to webR v0.2.1!

software-releases
quarto
webr
We’ve released a maintenance update v0.3.1 to the quarto-webr extension. This release upgrades the extension to use webR v0.2.1.
Sep 12, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.3.0 Released - Across the webR-Verse to v0.2.0!

software-releases
r
We’re release a second separate update to quarto-webr extension, v0.3.0, to incorporate the upstream release of webR v0.2.0. This release includes a number of changes to the…
Aug 17, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.2.1 Released - Demo, Demo, Demo!

software-releases
r
With v0.2.1 of the quarto-webr extension, the focus has been on improving the development experience and making it easier to get started with the extension. We’ve added a…
Aug 17, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

slcm v0.1.0 Released

software-releases
r
The slcm package (CRAN, GitHub) provides an implementation of the exploratory Sparse Latent Class Model (SLCM) for Binary Data described by Chen, Y., Culpepper, S. A., and…
Aug 12, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.2.0 Released - Accessibility

software-releases
r
In version 0.2.0 of the quarto-webr extension, our goal was to improve the accessibility of the code editor used within the extension. To accomplish this, we transitioned…
May 1, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.1.0 Released - Options Galore

software-releases
r
The latest version of quarto-webr, v0.1.0, seeks to allow for document-level options to be set. By setting these options, users can control the behavior of webR directly…
Apr 11, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.0.4 Released - Custom Code Cell Name

software-releases
quarto
webr
With version 0.0.4 of quarto-webr, we’ve sought to take advantage of a new Quarto feature that allows for custom code cell names. This feature is particularly useful for…
Mar 30, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.0.3 Released - Escape Escape

software-releases
quarto
webr
In the latest release of quarto-webr, version 0.0.3, the extension has been updated to address a few issues that were identified after the initial release. The primary…
Mar 19, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.0.1 Released - Democratizing Data Science

software-releases
quarto
webr
With the quarto-webr extension, we’re seeking to extend the popular language agnostic document creation tool quarto to take advantage of the online version of R powered by we…
Mar 12, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

quarto-webr v0.0.2 Released - Plot and Service Worker Fixes

software-releases
quarto
webr
We’ve released an immediate follow-up to the initial release of quarto-webr to address a few issues that were identified in the initial release.
Mar 12, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

macrtools - v0.0.1 Released: Automatic macOS R Compiled Toolchain Installation from within R

software-releases
r
The macrtools (Website) package lowers the barrier of entry for R developers who work on macOS that want to incorporate compiled code on macOS. The package provides an…
Mar 7, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Disable Cisco Anyconnect Notice on macOS

programming
macos
The joys of Cisco AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client are plentiful while working remotely. However, the startup process and, subsequent warnings, are problematic.
Jan 10, 2023
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

bibtex v0.5.0 Released

software-releases
r
The {bibtex} R allows for BibTeX bibliographies to be imported into R.
Sep 25, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Italy and a trek with COVID-19

real-life
I had the opportunity to head out to Bologna, Italy for the 2022 International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (IMPS) at the The University of Bologna. I had a blast…
Jul 25, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Married

real-life
We’re married! Huzzah.
May 11, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.19.0.1 Released - New Optimizers Yogi, DemonSGD, DemonAdam, AdaBelief, and AdaSqrt!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Apr 11, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Microsoft 365, Two Factor Authentication, and Sending an Email from R

programming
r
One component when teaching is needing to send e-mails to students that contain announcements or provide feedback. Announcements serve as important reminders and a means to…
Feb 25, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

ohoegdm v0.1.0 Released: Ordinal Higher-Order Exploratory General Diagnostic Model for Polytomous Data

software-releases
r
The ohoegdm package (CRAN, GitHub) is home to the implementation of ordinal exploratory Higher-order General Diagnostic Model (OHOEGDM) for Polytomous Data described by Culpe…
Feb 24, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

cIRT v1.3.2 Released: Maintenance Release

software-releases
r
The cIRT package (CRAN, GitHub) is home to the implementation of Choice Item Response Theory (cIRT) described by Culpepper and Balamuta (2015). cIRT jointly models the…
Feb 21, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.18.2.1 Released - Fix Epoch Timing

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Feb 18, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Template for Auto-Deploying Quarto-Book on GitHub with GitHub Pages

programming
Editor’s Note: The author of this post has an affiliation with the GitHub Campus Advisors Program and sometimes receives free goodies from GitHub.
Feb 3, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

Our Lovely, Lovely Car Ride

real-life
When I was younger, we were never lost. In your words, we were just on a lovely, lovely car ride to our destination. As technology improved, our lovely, lovely car rides…
Jan 24, 2022
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Book Recommendations

academia
Editor’s Disclaimer: The links on this page contain my Amazon Associate referral code. By clicking on any of the Amazon links below, I will earn a small commission from…
Dec 31, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.18.1.1 Released - CMAES Infinity Loop Fix and Testing Improvements!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Nov 20, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.18.0.1 Released - Gradient Stability Techniques and Bugfixes!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Oct 22, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

sitmo v2.0.2 Released - Bag of Bugfixes and Modernizations

software-releases
r
The objective of sitmo (CRAN, GitHub) is to provide the means for performing parallel draws from a Parallel Pseudo Random Number Generator (PPRNG). To that end, the package…
Oct 13, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

edmdata v1.2.0 Released: New Oracle Strategy Sets and Probability Assessment Data

software-releases
r
The edmdata package (GitHub, Website) provides data sets from various administered assessments that can be used in diagnostic modeling. These data sets have been analyzed in…
Jul 24, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

searcher v0.0.6 Released - Search Ecosia and Rseek!

software-releases
r
The searcher package (CRAN, GitHub) provides a search interface to look up terms on popular websites such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Ecosia, Rseek, Twitter, Stac…
Jul 24, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

A Professor Is Born

real-life
At long last, the dissertation is done. No final edits. No more exams.
Jul 8, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.17.0.1 Released - Support for Multiobjective Optimizers!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Jul 6, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.16.1.1 Released - Better Unit Tests and Bug Fixes!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Mar 5, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

edmdata v1.1.0 Released: New Low Attribute Oracle Q and Documentation Fixes

software-releases
r
The edmdata package (GitHub, Website) provides data sets from various administered assessments that can be used in diagnostic modeling. These data sets have been analyzed in…
Jan 14, 2021
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.15.0.1 Released - New Callback: Optimization Summary Report

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Nov 4, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

msos v1.2.0 Released: Unbalanced data bug fix and a pkgdown site!

software-releases
r
The msos R package serves as the companion package to Professor Emeritus John Marden’s Multivariate Statistics: Old School, which is used in STAT 571: Multivariate Analysis…
Nov 1, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.14.2.1 Released - New NSGA2 optimizer and Bug Fixes!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Sep 10, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Automating Dependency Updates with GitHub Actions: The Ensmallen Case

github
github-actions
ensmallen
r
r-package
c++
There is a new version of this post discussing how to automate dependency updates using GitHub Actions when the upstream dependency is on GitLab.
Sep 6, 2020
James Balamuta

 

edmdata v1.0.0 Released: Pre-made data sets for Diagnostic Modeling!

software-releases
r
The edmdata package (GitHub, Website) provides data sets from various administered assessments that can be used in diagnostic modeling. These data sets have been analyzed in…
Aug 17, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Custom Box Sync Directory Name and Location on macOS

programming
macos
Box provides unlimited cloud-based storage for files at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. However, the Box Sync client has an glaring problem on every operating…
Aug 15, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

uiucthemes v0.3.1 Released - Upstream compatibility fixes and maintenance

software-releases
r
The uiucthemes package is an organizational R package that provides unified brand templates based on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s (UIUC) identity…
Jul 24, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.13.0.1 Released - Early Stopping with Lambdas and Update Deployment Automation

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Jul 24, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Dynamically Retriving Latest Pandoc from GitHub and Deploying on the Illinois Campus Cluster

programming
linux
Today, I had an epiphany on generating a report inside of the Illinois Campus Cluster (ICC) with R through rmarkdown. For a long time, I’ve wanted to avoid downloading data…
May 4, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Sending an Email from R with Blastula to Groups of Students

programming
r
One component when teaching is needing to send e-mails to students that contain announcements or provide feedback. Announcements serve as important reminders and a means to…
Apr 25, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

R Compiler Tools for Rcpp on macOS

programming
cpp
Editor’s Note: This is an updated post that covers how to install the macOS toolchain for versions of R starting at 4.y.z.
Apr 24, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Uninstalling the R development toolchain on macOS

programming
cpp
If you previously used either the clang4, clang6, clang7, gfortran 6.1, or the macos-rtools installer, please consider deleting the old components that were installed.
Apr 24, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.12.1.1 Released - QoL and compatibility improvements

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Apr 24, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Addressing uuid_t error when compiling with Rcpp 1.0.4 on macOS

programming
cpp
At the present time, for R 3.6.3 and Rcpp v1.0.4 there is an issue with the CRAN binaries of Rcpp.
Mar 28, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

edina v0.1.1 Released: Estimate an Exploratory Deterministic Input, Noisy ‘and’ Gate Model!

software-releases
r
The edina package provides a high-performance implementation of the Exploratory Deterministic Input, Noisy ‘and’ Gate Model (EDINA) described by Chen et al. (2018).…
Mar 26, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

cIRT v1.3.1 Released: More Modernization and Maintenance Release

software-releases
r
The cIRT package (CRAN, GitHub) is home to the implementation of Choice Item Response Theory (cIRT) described by Culpepper and Balamuta (2015). cIRT jointly models the…
Mar 24, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

errum v0.0.3 Released: Model an Exploratory Reduced Reparameterized Unified Model!

software-releases
r
The errum package provides a high-performance implementation of the Exploratory reduced Reparameterized Unified Model (ErRUM) described by Culpepper and Chen (2018).…
Mar 21, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Enabling libssh2 for git2r and usethis

programming
r
Recently, I’ve been on a bit of a usethis binge. I stumbled across usethis::pr_*() set of functions, which is geared toward speeding up contributions to community…
Mar 17, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

errorist v0.1.0 Released: Improved automatic warning searches

software-releases
r
errorist: one who holds to and propagates error
Feb 24, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.11.3.1 Released - Memory leak fix and other goodies!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Feb 20, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

searcher v0.0.5 Released - Search Twitter and Search Experience Customizations!

software-releases
r
The searcher package (CRAN, GitHub) provides a search interface to look up terms on popular websites such as Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Startpage, Twitter, StackOverflow, RStu…
Feb 6, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.11.1.1 Released - New Optimizers and Documentation Improvements!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Jan 14, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

msos v1.1.1 Released: House keeping and CRAN Task View Status for Teaching Statistics!

software-releases
r
Wow how time has flown. It’s been almost three years since the last update to msos R package, which was the second ever R package I created. msos serves as the companion…
Jan 9, 2020
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Advice for Students Looking for a Job in Data Science

real-life
Around mid-October, there is a rush of activity related to applications for graduate programs, internships, and full-time positions with companies. Over the years, I’ve…
Nov 1, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

uiucthemes v0.3.0 Released - Illinois-themed Metropolis HTML and Beamer Templates

software-releases
r
The uiucthemes package is an organizational R package that provides unified brand templates based on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s (UIUC) identity…
Oct 2, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.10.3.1 Released - Backwards compatibility and vignette example!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Sep 30, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Overriding RStudio’s Startup Hook inside Rprofile

programming
r
From the R and RStudio in a Secured Environment on CentOS 7 and Improving the secured computer-based testing environment for R on CentOS 7 using Rprofile and Renviron posts…
Sep 14, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.2.10.0.1 Released - Callbacks added and more types!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Sep 7, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Fully Transitioning to blogdown and hugo finite theme

programming
r
Within the past week, this website has received a facelift. Outside of the noticable visual upgrades, the site has also fully transitioned to using blogdown as a layer ontop…
Sep 5, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Installing Hugo on Dreamhost’s Ubuntu 18.04LTS version

programming
linux
Recently, I needed to upgrade the version of hugo generating this website. As I have other active projects that require dynamic execution, I’ve retained a level of hosting…
Sep 5, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.1.16.0.1 Released - New LBestPSO Optimizer and Objective Value Control

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Aug 29, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

searcher v0.0.4 Released - Search RStudio Community and Read about Search Patterns!

software-releases
r
The searcher package (CRAN, GitHub) provides a search interface to look up terms on popular websites such as ‘Google’, ‘Bing’, ‘DuckDuckGo’, ‘Startpage’, ‘StackOverflow’…
Jul 5, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

rvw 0.6.0: First release

programming
r
Editor’s Note: This post has been cross-posted on Dirk Eddelbuettel’s website and on the rvw R package’s GitHub page. The post was originally written by Ivan Pavlov, who…
Jun 29, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.1.15.0.1 Released - New QHAdam and QHSGD Optimizers

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
May 20, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

R Compiler Tools for Rcpp on macOS before R 4.0.0

programming
cpp
Editor’s Note: This is an updated post that covers how to install the macOS toolchain for versions of R starting at 3.6.z.
May 14, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.1.14.4.1 Released - More Bug Fixes

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
May 13, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

R macOS toolchain Evolution

programming
cpp
As the years pass by, the R development toolchain for macOS changes. The goal of this post is to provide a summary of how the toolchain has evolved across the releases.
May 5, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Removing the old R Custom gfortran 4.8.2 Binary

programming
cpp
Editor’s Note: Previous version of this advice could be found in the R Compiler Tools for Rcpp on macOS.
May 5, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Keeping Up to Date with R Developments

Staying Fresh in the Age of Data Science
programming
r
Over the years, I’ve slowly collected a set of websites to look at for information. Now, there isn’t enough time in a day to read in-depth each website. So, I end up…
Apr 23, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Improving the Secured Computer-based Testing Environment for R on CentOS 7 using Rprofile and Renviron

programming
r
Editor’s Note: The contents and improvements shown within this post were made possible by the understanding and encouragement of the Computer-based Testing Facility (CBTF) st…
Mar 19, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.1.14.1.1 Released - Added Optimizer DE and Bug Fixes

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Mar 10, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

cIRT v1.3.0 Released: Modernization and Maintenance Release

software-releases
r
The cIRT package (CRAN, GitHub) is home to the implementation of Choice Item Response Theory (cIRT) described by Culpepper and Balamuta (2015). cIRT jointly models the…
Jan 25, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.1.13.0.1 Released - Added Optimizer SPSA and Improved AugLagrangian Optimizer

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Jan 21, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Resources for Teaching at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

academia
When I started my graduate studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign I didn’t know a lot about the instructional infrastructure outside of what I experienced…
Jan 10, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

sitmo v2.0.1 Released

software-releases
r
The objective of sitmo (CRAN, GitHub) is to provide the means for performing parallel draws from a Parallel Pseudo Random Number Generator (PPRNG). To that end, the package…
Jan 7, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.1.12.0.1 Released - Added FTML, SWATS, PADAM, Eve Optimizers

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Jan 4, 2019
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Saving and Reading R Objects

An Investigation into R’s Serialization Formats
programming
r
The default analyst behavior is to export results as a CSV file and share them with their colleagues. Now, CSV files are preferred in this instance because they show “diffs”…
Dec 29, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Benefits of Using a Sparse Matrix

programming
r
Oddly enough, I spend a lot of my time talking about different kinds of data structures and when they should be used. Recently, one of my fellow graduate students discovered…
Dec 29, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.1.11.1.1 Released - Added WNGrad Optimizer

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. In particular, Ensmallen is a templated C++ mathematical…
Nov 30, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Using Google BigQuery to Obtain Reddit Comment Phrase Counts

programming
sql
As planning for the next semester kicks into full gear, students are asking an ever-increasing number of questions on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s…
Nov 13, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

RcppEnsmallen v0.1.10.0.1 Released - Perform Numerical Optimizations with Armadillo in R!

software-releases
r
The RcppEnsmallen package brings to R a Header-Only C++ Mathematical Optimization Library for Armadillo. Previous packages, like RcppNumerical, enabled optimization routines…
Oct 30, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

uiucthemes v0.2.1 Released: Market Information Lab @ UIUC Beamer Theme Added

software-releases
r
In this update, the uiucthemes package now has a gallery vignette that shows the sample skeleton of each theme supported by the package. Pictures of supported themes can be…
Oct 5, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

R and RStudio in a Secured Environment on CentOS 7

programming
r
Editor’s Note: A big thank you goes out to Kevin Ushey, an IDE developer for RStudio, who helped in isolating some issues that arose when taking RStudio offline (for…
Jul 21, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

cetcolor v0.2.0 Released: CET Perceptually Uniform Color Maps with Support for Colour Blind Users and Short Names

software-releases
r
The cetcolor package (CRAN, GitHub) is designed to bring to R the 56 colour maps created by Peter Kovesi, a part-time research fellow with the Geophysics and Image Analysis…
Jul 10, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

searcher v0.0.3 Released

software-releases
r
The searcher package (CRAN, GitHub) provides a search interface to look up terms on popular websites such as ‘Google’, ‘Bing’, ‘DuckDuckGo’, ‘ixquick’, ‘StackOverflow’…
Jul 4, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Hiding tempdir() and tempfile() Statements in R Documentation

programming
r
When writing documentation for an R package that aims to be listed on CRAN, there is a policy about where file output from examples or actual function calls should be…
Jul 1, 2018
James Balamuta

 

Ideas for Dates at UIUC

real-life
Dating often leads to the end of the beginning as the singular person that you once were disappears in favor of partnership that will endure the test of time.
Jul 1, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

sitmo v2.0.0 Released

software-releases
r
The objective of sitmo (CRAN, GitHub) is to provide the means for performing parallel draws from a Parallel Pseudo Random Number Generator (PPRNG). To that end, the package…
Jul 1, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Extracting and Comparing MD5 and SHA256 Hashes

programming
unix
This post sprung up due to the nature of the unofficial macOS Rtools toolchain being an “online-based” installer. Meaning, it will attempt to download the appropriate…
May 28, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Removing Large Files and Sensitive Information using BFG Repo Cleaner

programming
unix
As we come upon the start of group projects and student created visualizations, there is the inevitable issue that a group will commit a data set that is too large into…
May 28, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Common Operations with RcppArmadillo

programming
cpp
This post is a mind dump of working with the Armadillo library inside of R.
May 27, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

R Compiler Tools for Rcpp on macOS before R 3.6.0

programming
cpp
Editor’s Note: This is an updated post that covers how to install the macOS toolchain for versions of R starting at 3.5.z.
May 27, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Design hiccups of the tidyverse with rlang

programming
r
This essay was the second critique of the tidyverse with rlang-enabled written in the StackOverflow chat for R and addressed to Hadley Wickham, whom was visiting the…
Feb 13, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Woes of the rlang enabled tidyverse

programming
r
This essay was written in the StackOverflow chat for R and addressed to Hadley Wickham, whom was visiting the chatroom discussing critiques that had arisen.
Feb 12, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

errorist v0.0.1 Released

software-releases
r
errorist: one who holds to and propagates error
Jan 30, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Gift Policy

academia
Thank you for wanting to give me a gift. I appreciate the thought that I have contributed in a meaningful way to how you have grown as an individual. However, I am bound by…
Jan 27, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Letters of Recommendation Policy

academia
Thank you for considering me as a person whose letter of recommendation or reference you would like to have to advance your career in either academia or industry. In order…
Jan 26, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

uiucthemes v0.2.0 Released

software-releases
r
The University of Illinois is undergoing a rebranding campaign to shift away from the beloved “Column I” to the “Block I” logo. Per the official brand website, the colors…
Jan 22, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

searcher v0.0.2 Released

software-releases
r
The searcher provides a search interface to look up terms on popular websites such as ‘Google’, ‘Bing’, ‘DuckDuckGo’, ‘StackOverflow’, ‘GitHub’, and ‘BitBucket’. Upon…
Jan 14, 2018
TheCoatlessProfessor

Selecting an alternative compiler for R package testing on Travis-CI

programming
r
Editor’s Note: This post is based off of work by both Bob Rudis and Kevin Ushey on StackOverflow under the question Using an alternate compiler for Travis-CI R project builds…
Aug 22, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Multiple Linear Regression Proofs

statistics
Below are a few proofs regarding the least square derivation associated with multiple linear regression (MLR). These proofs are useful for understanding where MLR algorithm…
Jul 11, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

Making a Uniform Pseudo Random Number Generator (PRNG) with sitmo

programming
r
Editor’s Note: This post is published within the sitmo R package as a vignette.
Apr 30, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Registration of Entry Points in Compiled Code Loaded into R

programming
r
Editor’s Note 2018-01-20: This post is largely obsolete as Rcpp 0.12.12 (2017-07-13) and 0.12.13 (2017-09-24) have included autogeneration code to handle the native package…
Apr 28, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

sitmo v1.1.0 Released

software-releases
r
Moving along with the package updates, we come across the sitmo header-only R package that falls victim to R 3.4’s newest CRAN check: Found no calls to…
Apr 28, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

msos v1.1.0 Released

software-releases
r
With R 3.4 landing, it’s time to revisit msos - Multivariate Statistics: Old School - or the second ever R package I ever created. The origins of this package are related to…
Apr 28, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

visualize v4.3.0 Released

software-releases
r
Courtesy of R 3.4 being released last Friday, I’ve been on a package updating spree. The first package to receive such treatment is actual the first R package I ever wrote: v…
Apr 27, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

cIRT v1.2.1 Released: Maintenance Release

software-releases
r
The cIRT package (CRAN, GitHub) is home to the implementation of Choice Item Response Theory (cIRT) described by Culpepper and Balamuta (2015). cIRT jointly models the…
Apr 27, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

An Opinionated Tale of Why You Should Replace <- with =

programming
r
Oh, where to begin? I’m a bit of an outspoken critic of the <- assignment operator. I’ve been a bit vocal about it within my department to the point where I received the…
Feb 28, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

A modulefile Approach to Compiling R on a Cluster

programming
r
This is a follow up post to Working with R on a Cluster. Previously, we discussed ways to work with R in a purely distributed command line interface (CLI) environment.…
Feb 15, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Onboarding Script for a Research Group

academia
Onboarding n.
Feb 10, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Updating a homebrew formula

programming
macos
Below are a few notes regarding the best ways that I’ve found regarding how to go about updating homebrew formula. Now, there are many good resources out there including the …
Jan 1, 2017
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

To Rcpp Attributes and Beyond From inline

programming
rcpp
In the olden days of Rcpp, circa 2012 or before Rcpp 0.10.0, there was a bees knees approach to inlining C++ code with R using a package called inline. Fast forward to when…
Dec 18, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Unofficial Rcpp API Documentation

programming
cpp
Warning: This post is a work in progress. It will periodically be updated as time permits.
Oct 21, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Mass Adding and Removing Users on Ubuntu

programming
unix
I presently manage an online analytics platform for the Department of Statistics at the University Of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as part of my work on autograding student…
Sep 21, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

Installing RTools for Compiled Code via Rcpp

programming
cpp
Compiled code in R is the zeitgeist echoing throughout all corridors of user styles. The advent of Rcpp and the afforded seamless transition between R objects and C++ objects…
Jul 25, 2016
James Balamuta

 

Porting R’s table function to C++

programming
cpp
Have you ever wanted to see if you can write the part of the table() function’s frequency summation for one vector in C++?! Well, that’s exactly what I did by accident. As…
May 5, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

cIRT v1.2.0 Released: New Vignettes and Package News Updates!

software-releases
r
The cIRT package (CRAN, GitHub) is home to the implementation of Choice Item Response Theory (cIRT) described by Culpepper and Balamuta (2015). cIRT jointly models the…
Apr 14, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

NumPy Arrays to R Array Objects

One of the downsides of having multiple programming languages is that each have their own defined niches in both academia and industry worlds that results in data not…
Mar 31, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

OpenMP in R on OS X

programming
Editor’s Note: This post was updated on 06/18/2017 to address the changes in R 3.4.0, which allow for more native support of OpenMP in R.
Mar 19, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Working with R on a Cluster

programming
r
Often times I receive inquiries on how to deploy R packages or conduct simulation studies on the Illinois Campus Cluster (ICC). After writing a few responses, I realized…
Mar 14, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Set R’s Seed in Rcpp (Sequential Case)

programming
cpp
The goal behind this post is to quickly point out a solution for setting the random seed from within Rcpp. This is particularly helpful to control the reproducibility of the…
Feb 29, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

R Data Packages in External Data Repositories using the Additional_repositories field

In the prior series entry on data packages, there was a discussion about how to create an R data package. Within the final entry in the series, the goal is to address the…
Jan 17, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Creating an R Data Package

In the previous entry, there was a discussion regarding CRAN’s R package policy, specifically on the size of R data packages. Within this post, the aim is to address the…
Jan 17, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

Histogram of CRAN R Package Sizes in MB

Size and Limitations of Packages on CRAN

This is the first entry out of three writings to address the nature of Data Packages within the R ecosystem. Within this post, we’ll talk about R package guidelines…
Jan 17, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Differences in Primitive Data Types between OS X and Windows

programming
cpp
A while ago, I was given a binary file reading script written using MATLAB. The scripts goal was to read a binary output file from an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) into a…
Jan 9, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

R Compiler Tools for Rcpp on OS X before R 3.4.0

programming
cpp
Editor’s Note 5/15/19: This is an old post that covered how to install the macOS toolchain for versions of R between R 3.0.0 - 3.3.*. For more up-to-date instructions that…
Jan 9, 2016
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

cIRT v1.1.0 Released: Additional Choice Information Added

software-releases
r
The cIRT package (CRAN, GitHub) is home to the implementation of Choice Item Response Theory (cIRT) described by Culpepper and Balamuta (2015). cIRT jointly models the…
Dec 30, 2015
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

cIRT v1.0.0 Released: Choice Item Response Theory

software-releases
r
The cIRT package (CRAN, GitHub) is home to the implementation of Choice Item Response Theory (cIRT) described by Culpepper and Balamuta (2015). cIRT jointly models the…
Dec 8, 2015
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Sum of Squares Manipulations

statistics
Simple Linear Regression (SLR) has been tickled to death. One interesting tidbit about SLR is that of the different Sum of Squares formulations that exist and how they tie…
Aug 19, 2015
James Balamuta

 

Using the ff package to load the kaggle criteo data set into R

programming
r
The goal of this post is to demonstrate how to load criteo data set associated with the kaggle competition into R using the ff and ffbase R packages. I’ll also present a way…
Dec 2, 2014
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Reproducible Research, R, R Studio, and You!

programming
r
A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was asked to give a talk about reproducible research in the R ecosystem during the University of Illinois at…
Oct 27, 2014
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Talkin’ Bout A Big Data Revolution

programming
r
Big Data is here and there is no turning back.
Sep 29, 2014
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Setting up RStudio to work with RcppArmadillo

programming
cpp
Over the past week, I’ve been working on converting R scripts into scripts that hook into R’s C++ API using RcppArmadillo. The common reaction when I mentioned the project…
May 13, 2014
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Rcpp, RcppArmadillo and OS X Mavericks “-lgfortran” and “-lquadmath” error

programming
cpp
Editor’s Note 07/26/2017: This post provides an overview of why the gfortran error is occurring along with solutions to fix the macOS R versions:
May 5, 2014
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Tukey Studentized Range and You!

statistics
Suppose $ r $ independent observations denoted: \[{ Y_1 }, \cdots ,{ Y_r } \mathop \sim\limits^{ iid } N\left( { \mu ,{ \sigma ^2 } } \right)\] Let \[W = range(Y) = max(Y_{…
Apr 8, 2014
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

The Trace of the Kronecker Product

statistics
One of the coolest ideas I’ve come across recently relates to the way patterns form in matrices. Moreover, the way we can induce a pattern in a matrix. Enter the Kronecker…
Dec 30, 2013
James Balamuta

 

Did you know? UIUC Edition

real-life
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, effectively referred to hereinafter as UIUC, is starting up again. The freshman parents are saying there goodbyes, the…
Dec 28, 2013
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

M-Answers Multiple Choice Probabilities

statistics
We are interested in knowing the probability that a student understands the answer and concept given that the answer selected is correct.
Dec 24, 2013
James Balamuta

 

Counting how many variables are in a SAS Dataset

sas
Dynamic SAS Macro programs hinge on the ability to tell how many variables exist within a given SAS Dataset. The majority of solutions that exist to solve this dilemma rely…
Dec 24, 2013
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Writing messages to SAS Log in Color

programming
sas
Trying to debug a macro with options mtrace mprint mlogic symbolgen; activated? Good luck in being able to read the log file muchless finding the error without using GREP.
Dec 24, 2013
TheCoatlessProfessor

 

Errors Thrown By SAS Macro Comments

sas
When working with SAS Macros, one of the most dastardly needs is to comment code. Easy no? Think again!
Dec 24, 2013
TheCoatlessProfessor
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