The Net Takeaway: R GUIs

R GUIs · 09/09/2008 12:18 AM, Analysis

First off, if you found this page via a web search or bookmark, you may be much happier in the R Section of this site to see the multiple articles about R, including this one, but also about Packages, Data manipulation, etc.

The home of all R GUIs is http://www.sciviews.org/_rgui/ which is accessible via the “R GUIs” link on the R home page. They include many Linux options which I will not delve into here at this time (I used to work at Microsoft, sorry bout that). Also linked are web front ends, SOAP and other RPC type calls of R servers, and DCOM/App links for Excel, Gnumeric and a few others.

Best Choices:

JGR is my current favorite. Running in Java, it includes completion, color syntax highlighting, integration of the iPlot interactive plotting packages, and nice people on the mailing list. I say start here, if for no other reason than its quick and easy. BTW, in the syntax editor, highlight your code and Ctrl-Enter to run it. Not documented, but that’s how its done.

Some more on JGR. If you are typing in the little box at the bottom of the screen (command box) or the editor (Tools|Editor), Tab completes names where possible, or drops down a selector. Up arrow in the command box reviews recent commands. If you are using a function, you can press when your mouse is over the function name and the function specifications should appear; they should also pop up as you type the “(” after the function name. Object Browser is very handy; in the Data Objects tab, double clicking on objects opens a grid to edit them. (In addition, clicking on an object in a dataframe opens just that variable; not as handy as having the whole grid but still cool.) Not quite sure what Tools | DataTable Editor actually does. Package Manager and Package Installer are very nice ways to add and see what packages are available and loaded. update.packages() can be used to update the thing since they release new versions relatively frequently.

R-Commander is one of the more popular GUIs. It does stay on the more “basic” side, but still is a good attempt to ease beginners into the world of R. And, after looking through the menus, there are some pretty handy shortcuts there, akin to SPSS Base offerings plus a few more. Worth trying. Open Source.

SciViews-R is another popular gui. Currently in an alpha state, it could be a very powerful tool, though it feels more like an IDE than an analytic home. One nice feature: A “report editor” with full HTML editing capabilities. In addition, SciViews can integrate with R-Commander and include its menus and features as well. All of this is open source.

These guys also offer SciViews-K which turns the rather nice Komodo Editor into an R Editor; very much worth a try. These guys are also the makers of the quick and simple Tinn-R, though I prefer JGR mostly for the fact that JGR includes a simple data editor. However, if you don’t like Java, Tinn-R is pretty nice.

If you just want an editor, the IDE/Script Editors page lists many of them, including Jedit. One interesting quickie is Tinn-R, basically a Notepad with some R twists and tweaks. I tend to default to Jedit, but that’s because I use it in so many other places. In addition, JGR has color syntax and code completion, so I have been using it more often as an editor as well.

Up and Comers:

Rpad is an interesting mix of web based tool with more of an app feel. As they say on their page, “Rpad is an interactive, web-based analysis program. Rpad pages are interactive workbook-type sheets. Rpad is an analysis package, a web-page designer, and a gui designer all wrapped in one. The user doesn’t have to install anything—everything’s done through a browser.” Could become something cool in the future…

RKward is an open-source GUI which looks pretty good… but is KDE and therefore Linux only. When it hits Windows, it will be worth looking at.

PMG is the “poor man’s gui”. I haven’t tried it yet, requires GTK libraries (Linux will already have them, Windows will need them installed; site tells you how).

Rattle which Togaware (an Australian Data Miner) says “(the R Analytical Tool To Learn Easily) provides a simple and logical interface for quick and easy data mining.” Don’t know much about it; it too requires the GTK libraries which are pretty easy to install.

SimpleR GUI is a good start for a GUI. Simple-R Handbook (PDF) shows how to use it. Some very clever features and graphics.

Couldn’t care less about:

ESS and the Emacs bindings: as a non-emacs person (go Jedit!), I find little value in using a fat and overblown editor to run an already complicated system. Talking to emacs/vim folks (they both have problems) is similar to Name that Tune in reverse: I can do that in 10 keystrokes! I can do that in 12 keystrokes! Anyway… I am just jealous because I’ve tried a few times and still can’t learn Emacs or VI, so I derogate them to make myself feel better. Anyway.

Brogdar is a commercial app which sits on top of R. However, it costs around $350, and though it has some interesting features, I can’t recommend it at this point (for $350, you can start to buy entire stats packages with support, so best of luck to them).

StatPaper attempts to turn R into a Mathematica or Maple gui, intermixing graphs and commands. Not much done since 2003, so don’t hold your breath. Not even listed on the r-project.org site.

Farther afield…
OpenI is an overall reporting and BI system, but it has a link to use R. This is by the astounding guys at LoyaltyMatrix. See more of their coolness at R at LoyaltyMatrix

BEE is another suite of tools supporting Business Intelligence project implementation including ETL tool and OLAP server and a thin client, with R as the “analytic” engine. Not updated since 2005.

DecisionStudio is a “desktop BI platform”. Basically integrates open source offerings including MySql, DBDesigner, R and Tinn-R, iReport and JasperReports, all linked with Python. Last updated in March, 2006, so may be dead.

Little Seeds, starting to grow…
Biocep-R, Statistical Analysis Tools for the Cloud Computing Age includes not only a Java front end, but a whole framework for distributed computing. The “Virtual R Workbench” looks pretty impressive, but unclear how much of the other server stuff you need.

R AnalyticFlow is like the visual front end from Clementine or SAS Ent Miner. Still early, but could be the front end to keep if you like these flowchart approaches.

Visualization of Data
Besides a gui to help you use R, there is a also a growing field of graphical depiction of data to help with analysis. This can be as simple as a scatterplot, or as sophisticated as a 3d chart allowing you to select points and see their relationships highlighted on multiple other charts simultaneously.

One of the more popular tools for this in the open source world is the GGOBI system, and R has a pretty good linkup called rggobi. Like R, it’s a whole system, so you won’t get all of its power on the first day, but it’s worth playing with to see just how easy it can be.

Thanks to Andy Edmonds on the Web Analytics Group for reminding me that I left rggobi out.

* * *

Name		Remember
E-mail
http://
Message
	Textile Help
Please note that your email will be obfuscated via entities, so its ok to put a real one if you feel like it...