From osklyar at maninvestments.com  Thu Feb 19 12:38:20 2009
From: osklyar at maninvestments.com (Sklyar, Oleg (London))
Date: Thu, 19 Feb 2009 11:38:20 -0000
Subject: [Rd] Google Summer of Code 2009
In-Reply-To: <18844.37238.384954.744812@ridcully.stat.uni-muenchen.de>
References: <18844.37238.384954.744812@ridcully.stat.uni-muenchen.de>
Message-ID: <1A68FCB28DE72F4BA3B967E6506CCE43047DF6A4@mildnpexmb01.maninvestments.ad.man.com>

Two ideas:

1) A library for interactive plots in R

R lacks functionality that would allow displaying of interactive plots with two distinct functionalities: zooming and panning. This functionality is extremely important for the analysis of large, high frequency, data sets spanning over large ranges (in time as well). The functionality should acknowledge Axis methods in callbacks on rescale (so that it could be extended to user-specific classes for axis generation) and should have a native C interface to R (i.e. no Java, but such cross platform widgets like GTK or QT or anything similar that does not require heavy-weight add-ons). GTK has been used successfully from within R in many applications (RGtk, rgobby, EBImage etc) on both *nix and Windows, and thus could be a preferential option, it is also extremely easy to integrate into R. The existing tools (e.g. iplots) are slow, unstable and lack support for time/date plots (or actually any non-standard axes) and they are all Java. We are looking into stanard xy-plots as well as image and 3D plots. Obviously one can think of further interactivity, but this would be too much for the Summer of Code project. A good prototype would already be a step forward.

2) Cross platform GUI debugger, preferably further Eclipse integration (beyond StatET capabilities)

Tibco has recently released the S+ workbench for eclipse which has a reasonable support for non-command line debugging. In the R community, the StatET eclipse plugin mimics a lot of code development functionality of S+ workbench, but has poor support for in-line execution of R sessions in eclipse and does not have debugging capabilities. Supporting this project further, or developing a GUI debugger independent of eclipse, are both acceptable options. The debugger should allow breakpoints, variable views etc.

For both of the above, our interest is mostly on the Linux side, but one should look into cross-platform solutions.

Regards,
Oleg

Dr Oleg Sklyar
Research Technologist
AHL / Man Investments Ltd
+44 (0)20 7144 3107
osklyar at maninvestments.com 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-devel-bounces at r-project.org 
> [mailto:r-devel-bounces at r-project.org] On Behalf Of Friedrich Leisch
> Sent: 18 February 2009 22:54
> To: r-devel at r-project.org
> Cc: Manuel.Eugster at stat.uni-muenchen.de
> Subject: [Rd] Google Summer of Code 2009
> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> in approximately one months time mentoring institutions can propose
> projects for the Google Summer of Code 2009, see
> 
>   http://code.google.com/soc/
> 
> Last year the R Foundation succesfully participated with 4 projects,
> see http://www.r-project.org/SoC08/ for details.  We want to
> participate again this year. Our project proposals will be managed by
> Manuel Eugster (email address in CC). Manuel is one of my PhD students
> and mentored the Roxygen project last year. This mail is mainly
> intended to make you aware of the program, Manuel will send a followup
> email with more technical details in the next days.
> 
> In this phase we are looking for potential mentors who can offer
> interesting projects to students.  I don't think that we will get much
> more than 4-6 projects, so don't be disappointed if you propose
> something and don't get selected.
> 
> There are two selection steps involved: (a) The R Foundation has to
> compile an official "ideas list" of projects, for which students can
> apply. Last year we had 8 of those. After that, we (b) get a certain
> number of slots from Google (4 last year) and all prospective project
> mentors can vote on which projects actually get funding.
> 
> Currently we are looking for good ideas for phase (a). I give no
> guarantees that all ideas will get on our official ideas list, what we
> pick depends on the number of submissions and topics, respectively. We
> want to make sure to have a broad range of themes, it is unlikely,
> that we will, e.g., pick 10 database projects. Also keep in mind that
> students have only three months time. This is not a research exercise
> for the students, you should have a rough idea what needs to be done.
> 
> Last year we had a majority of "infrastructure projects", and only few
> with focus on statistical algorithms. We got a lot of applications for
> the latter, so don't hesitate to formulate projects in that
> direction. Important infrastructure may get precedence over
> specialized algorithms, though, because the whole community can benfit
> from those. But that will be a decision in phase (b), and we are not
> there yet.
> 
> Please don't send any ideas to me right now, wait for the above
> mentioned email by Manuel on the technical details for idea 
> submission.
> 
> Best,
> Fritz
> 
> -- 
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
> Prof. Dr. Friedrich Leisch 
> 
> Institut f?r Statistik                          Tel: (+49 89) 
> 2180 3165
> Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t                  Fax: (+49 89) 
> 2180 5308
> Ludwigstra?e 33
> D-80539 M?nchen                     
> http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch
> --------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------
>    Journal Computational Statistics --- http://www.springer.com/180 
>           M?nchner R Kurse --- http://www.statistik.lmu.de/R
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
> 

**********************************************************************
Please consider the environment before printing this email or its attachments.
The contents of this email are for the named addressees ...{{dropped:19}}



[Rd] Google Summer of Code 2009
Sklyar, Oleg (London