
Machine Learning in R, in a nutshell - Anon84
http://blog.revolution-computing.com/2009/09/machine-learning-in-r-in-a-nutshell.html
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joe_the_user
Anyone have an idea how R and Matlab compare?

I've only worked with Matlab and it's great for putting together library
functions but horrible for writing any functions yourself. Is R any better?

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Bjoern
Difficult question. I know that Matlab has some very strong Machine Learning
libraries which make it extremely convenient to experiment. As much as I like
GNU R and FOSS in this case I would say Matlab has the upper hand.

For one it has a huge userbase which posts code examples and solutions to
various problems. Another being that Matlab has nice Machine Learning libraies
in my opinion.

There are e.g. some interesting video lectures from stanford about this topic
by Andrew Ng <http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs229/> &&
<http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A89DCFA6ADACE599> )

In the first lecture the question comes up and he has the same opinion.

I think eventually GNU R will be better but that will still take some time.

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nearestneighbor
Speaking of machine learning, does anyone have any potential start-up ideas
involving it that they are not going to implement themselves?

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khafra
If anyone had machine learning startup ideas that _would_ implement
themselves, Eliezer Yudkowsky would probably be interested.

Tangentially, there seem to be a lot of computer vision startups--there's a
company called Cortexica with an unreleased iPhone wine label identifier, and
Evernote's nonpareil handwriting recognition makes me wish its algorithm were
open; open-source alternatives seem to focus only on printed text.

