Gnumeric 1.10 released

OStatic.com has a review of the new Gnumeric 1.10 release. For those that don't know Gnumeric is an open source spreadsheet application built specifically for the GNOME desktop environment. Gnome can use a wide variety of spreadsheet formats including Microsoft Excel files, Lotus 1-2-3, Applix, Sylk, XBase, Open Office, Quattro Pro, Dif, Plan Perfect, and Oleo. Gnumeric's files is based on the Open Document Format.

The new 1.10 release removes the 65000 line restriction that was so common to many spreadsheet programs. From the Ostatic review...

The rest is all good news, though. Users will find plenty of improvements in Gnumeric 1.10, including better graphs with new plot types, about 40 new functions, and performance improvements for larger spreadsheets.

Gnumeric can be a great alternative to other spreadsheet programs.

R Project named in Intelligent Enterprise 2010 Editor's Choice Awards

News from Revolutions blog says that R Project was named to the Intelligent Enterprise 2010 Editor's Choice Awards. They also state that the R Project is also one of the twelve companies to watch in Business Intelligence. For those that use R it should come as no surprise the increased notoriety that R is receiving.

Other Open Source selections from the Intelligent Enterprise 2010 Editor's Choice Awards include Apache (open source web server), Jaspersoft (open source business intelligence), and Eclipse Foundation (open source software development).

A review of website Programming R

Lately I have been getting deeply involved in the statistics world of R. I have recently taken a job in online marketing and I am finding R to be a very useful tool. The first thing I did was to try to find tools of the R trade. I am finding that there are a lot of great tools for R available on the internet.

One of those online tools is the website Programming R. Programming R seems to be a fairly new website that seems to be only around for about a year. The promise of Programming R is it's dedication to R users from beginner to advanced. I find the articles written for Programming R to be very concise and well written. Programming R also provides book reviews for R. This is a very helpful tool for the beginner user.

One interesting section of the Programming R website is its devotion to R consultants and R jobs. The R project itself promotes these but its refreshing to see an independent website to promote statistical jobs devoted to R.

There is also a web forum which is always useful. Unfortunately its not very featured by its users for some reason. Hopefully as the website grows the forum will be used more often.

Overall I really like Programming R for its writing and content. I recommend new and veteran R users to seek Programming R as a resource.

When to use Excel and when to use R

There is a great post in O'Reilly's Answers that talks about when to use Excel and when to use R. I have been using a lot of R lately to perform some data analysis and logistic regression. R is a great tool for statistical analysis. R is also free and open source.

I am going to be doing some more blogging about statistics and using R (R-project homepage). There is a huge amount of uses with R and I'm sure I will only hit the tip of the iceberg. If you have experience in R please let me know and I would love to share your experiences.