DATA MINING
Desktop Survival Guide by Graham Williams |
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Todo: This chapter is getting close to final draft.
There is more to exploring data than simply generating textual summaries and graphical plots. As we have begun to see, R has unsurpassed capabilities in generating graphics that can unlock the story our data is telling us, and then effectively communicate that story to others. However, R is specifically suited to generating static graphics--that is, as () says, ``there is no benefit displaying on a computer screen as opposed to on a piece of paper.''
R graphics were implemented with the idea of presenting the data visually, rather than interacting with it. We write scripts for the display. We then go back to our script to fine tune or explore different options for the displayed data. This is great for repeatable generation of graphics, but not so efficient for the ``follow your nose'' approach of quick and efficient data exploration.
Rattle provides links to packages that provide more interactive graphic visualisations using the latticist and rggobi packages. The Explore tab's Interactive option provides this linkage to these tools.