The Big R-Book

PART VIIReporting

In this book we already studied data and building mathematical models on that data. The next logical step is to communicate clearly and concisely, bring our opinion across and point the management to potential opportunities and risks. The first step is generally building a good presentation.

Again, R can be our workhorse and be the cornerstone of a free work-flow that produces professional results. While certain applications might have an edge in environments where data is not measured in Gigabytes but in Terrabytes, or where the inflow of information is extremely fast and one has to make sense of the flow of data rather than a given snapshot. The reality is that in almost all applications in almost all organisations from the sole trader to the giant that employs three hundred thousand people and processes hundred thousand payments per second one will find that a free set of tools based around R, C++, MySQL and presented in a pdf or html5 web-page is more than enough.

The difference is in the mindset and in the price tag. The large corporate can save millions of dollars switching to a free workflow. However, that entails taking responsibility as there is no company to blame in the unexpected case that something could go wrong. Should it also be mentioned that the relevant manager's bonus is linked to tangible micro-results –which are easier to obtain with the support of a commercial company – rather than to themoney that is not spend (or overall company profit). ...