Using the Statistical Program R for Running Statistics

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Using the Statistical Program R for Running Statistics

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RobertYoung Ten Centuries Points: 1130 More actions · Answer 1

ashende (3/10/2014)
Thank you for the article. It is nice to know that this tool is available and it may be useful in some cases. However, I think Excel would be a better tool to use in most cases.

Just remember: The London Whale did his damage running an Excel spreadsheet (which he clearly didn't understand). The standard rejoinder is, "spreadsheets don't kill people, people kill people", but the fact is Excel simply doesn't have the horsepower to do things right. As a result, "analysts" adjust their work to the limitations of Excel. Perhaps we should call all analysts Jonah?

(aside: here's a recap of Morgan's postmortem, from here: http://www.dangreller.com/the-london-whale-operational-maturity-and-microsoft-excel/ )

The report points out the following issues with the use of these Excel spreadsheets:

A critical model used to determine risk was based on a series of spreadsheets which were manually maintained by copying and pasting data between the sheets

A spreadsheet error failed to reflect a $400 million loss

A key spreadsheet used to determine risk used an incorrect statistical model for calculations. The spreadsheet had a cell that determined which model it would use and defaulted to the wrong model

Another spreadsheet error made an incorrect calculation by dividing by the sum of two numbers, instead of dividing by their averages

Inadequate tracking of changes to spreadsheets prevented personnel from determining when errors were first introduced

Or, don't let your juveniles near the sharp cutlery.

Steph Locke SSCrazy Points: 2963 More actions · Answer 2

I'm a big fan of eusprig - the horror stories are scary stuff but it also contains some useful best practice documents

http://www.eusprig.org/[/url]

kromerm SSC Rookie Points: 25 More actions · Answer 3

Or you could just use the built-in SQL Server data mining and DMX extensions without needing to use xp_cmdshell and learn R at all!

mxlbmo Grasshopper Points: 12 More actions · Answer 4

This is a great article that really allows you to integrate the R statistics in a production environment based on SQL SERVER.

Thank You !

Alessio M.

INCREDIBLEmouse SSC Eights! Points: 835 More actions · Answer 5

I am also no fan of the cmdshell method permissions requirement for running an R script. However, in SQL Server 2016, R Services enabled, with external scripts enabled, we can use sp_execute_external_script to run an R script from within sql mangler studio, and have results sent back.. all nicely integrated, as it should be. 😎

akljfhnlaflkj SSC Guru Points: 76202 More actions · Answer 6

akljfhnlaflkj

SSC Guru

Points: 76202

February 25, 2016 at 4:54 pm

#1861300

More info on R, thanks.

yannic20 Newbie Points: 1 More actions · Answer 7

Great work Tomaz,

Thanks for sharing this wonderful integration and opening up lots of possibilites with these two great products (R and SQL). Excellent work.