Software

Posts that discuss software.

Padé approximants: CRAN package

Published by on June 10, 2015

While working on the previous post about Padé approximants, a search on CRAN showed that there was only one package which calculated the coefficients, given the appropriate Taylor series: the pracma package. The method it uses seems rather sophisticated, but does allow for calculating coefficients “beyond” that which the Taylor series would allow. Therefore, I Read the full article…

New package on CRAN: lamW

Published by on May 26, 2015

Recently, in various research projects, the Lambert-W function arose a number of times. Somewhat frustratingly, there is no built-in function in R to calculate it. The only options were those in the gsl and LambertW packages, the latter merely importing the former. Importing the entire GNU Scientific Library (GSL) can be a bit of a Read the full article…

I’ve updated the directions as to how to build 64-bit R for Windows linking to OpenBLAS, as the entire R build process for Windows will change for R version 3.2 and subsequent. I’ve turned it into a static page, instead of a post, in case the build process changes again. While the title has 3.2 in it, the URL doesn’t, so it should be future-proof. Then again, that’s number 47 on the list of 996 famous last words! As always, I’m interested in hearing if anyone successfully builds it and how much of a difference it makes.

Condorcet ranking and Rcpp

Published by on March 13, 2014 | 9 Responses

I had the opportunity recently to be asked to join a committee which had to select candidates for an upcoming election. In the candidate selection phase, the members of the committee use preferential voting to rank the candidates. Prior to the meeting, I did some research on preferential voting systems. I found two main classes Read the full article…

An OpenBLAS-based Rblas for Windows 64

Published by on October 22, 2013 | 6 Responses

One of the more important pieces of software that powers R is its BLAS, which stands for Basic Linear Algebra Subprograms. This is the suite of programs which, as its name implies, performs basic linear algebra routines such as vector copying, scaling and dot products; linear combinations; and matrix multiplication. It is the engine on Read the full article…