[R] Revolutions blog: July 2017 roundup

[David Smith]

Since 2008, Microsoft (formerly Revolution Analytics) staff and guests
have written about R every weekday at the Revolutions blog
(http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com) and every month I post a summary
of articles from the previous month of particular interest to readers
of r-help.

In case you missed them, here are some articles related to R from the
month of July:

A tutorial on using the rsparkling package to apply H20's algorithms to data
in HDInsight:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/h2o-hdinsight.html

Several exercises to learn parallel programming with the foreach package:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/foreach-exercises.html

A presentation on the R6 class system, by Winston Chang:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/the-r6-class-system.html

Joyplot, a ggplot2 extension for visualizing multiple time series or
distributions: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/joyplots.html

SQL Server 2017, with many new R-related capabilities, is nearing release:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/sql-server-rc1.html

Ali Zaidi on using neural embeddings with R and Spark to analyze Github
comments:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/neural-embeddings-nlp.html

R ranks #6 in the 2017 IEEE Spectrum Top Programming Languages:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/ieee-spectrum-2017-top-programming-languages.html

Course materials on "Data Analysis for the Life Sciences", from Rafael
Irizarry: http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/harvardx.html

How to securely store API keys in R scripts with the "secret" package:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/secret-package.html

An in-depth tutorial on implementing neural network algorithms in R:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/nnets-from-scratch.html

Recordings from the useR!2017 conference in Brussels are now available:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/revisiting-user2017.html 
The conference was also livestreamed:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/user-2017-livestream.html

Recording of my lightning talk, "R in Minecraft":
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/r-in-minecraft-lightning.html

Uwe Ligges' useR!2017 keynote, "20 years of CRAN":
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/20-years-of-cran.html

A framework for implementing a credit risk prediction system with Microsoft R:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/credit-risk-prediction.html

The R Consortium is conducting a survey of R users:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/r-consortium-survey.html

The rattle package (and R GUI framework) now supports XGBoost models:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/xgboost-support-added-to-rattle.html

My presentation at useR!2017, "R, Then and Now":
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/how-perceptions-of-r-have-changed.html

Seven Microsoft customers using R for production applications:
http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/more-companies-using-r.html

And some general interest stories (not necessarily related to R):

* A video explanation of the rolling shutters effect:
  http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/because-its-friday-rolling-shutters-explained.html

* How Bitcoin and other digital currencies work:
  http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/because-its-friday-how-bitcoin-works.html

* How sinkholes form:
  http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/because-its-friday-hidden-holes.html

* Air traffic control in Flight Simulator X:
  http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/because-its-friday-o-captain.html

* High school students build a facial-recognition drone:
  http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/07/deep-learning-and-drones.html

As always, thanks for the comments and please keep sending suggestions to
me at davidsmi at microsoft.com or via Twitter (I'm @revodavid).

Cheers,
# David

-- 
David M Smith <davidsmi at microsoft.com>
R Community Lead, Microsoft AI & Research
Tel: +1 (312) 9205766 (Chicago IL, USA)
Twitter: @revodavid | Blog:  http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com