new version of the randomForest package

[Liaw, Andy]

I have just uploaded to CRAN the new version of the randomForest package.
Those who had used the previous version will absolutely want to upgrade, as
the new version fixes a few serious bugs (some giving wrong results w/o
warning or error).  This version matches version 3.3 of the classification
code and version 1.0 of the regression code on Prof. Breiman's web site.

The package provides an R interface to Prof. Breiman's code for regression
and classification by the random forest algorithm.  Details about the
algorithm (and the original Fortran code) can be found on

  http://oz.berkeley.edu/users/breiman

New features and bug fixes include:

o  Random forest for regression problems now incorporated into the package.

o  Factor (categorical) predictors are now handled correctly, especially
through the formula interface.  (The previous version wrongly expands
factors into contrasts.)

o  Ordered factor predictors are now correctly handled.

o  For classification problem, there is an new option for the predict method
to calculate proximity measure for the test data.

o  Calls to R's random number generator from Fortran have been made more
portable.  I believe this was causing segmentation faults on some platforms
in the previous version.

o  The Example section of the help page for randomForest now show some of
the extra things that can be done with the randomForest object.

o  The call to the underlying C/Fortran code no longer copy data (i.e.,
.C(..., DUP=FALSE) is used).  This should reduce memory requirement quite a
bit, especially for large data sets.  This should be fairly safe since data
pass to C/Fortran are copies made at the R level anyway.

o  The version number of the package now tracks the version number of Prof.
Breiman's classification code (i.e., currently 3.3).

o  The spelling of my co-author's name has been corrected!

Because of the limited amount of time I was able to spend on this package,
the code are not the most elegant.  I would appreciate any
comments/suggestions/bugs/patches.

Regards,
Andy

Andy I. Liaw, PhD
Biometrics Research          Phone: (732) 594-0820
Merck & Co., Inc.              Fax: (732) 594-1565
P.O. Box 2000, RY84-16            Rahway, NJ 07065
mailto:andy_liaw at merck.com



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