[R] popular R packages

[Jeffrey Horner]

Dirk Eddelbuettel wrote:
> On 8 March 2009 at 13:27, Duncan Murdoch wrote:
> | But we don't even have that data, since CRAN is distributed across lots 
> | of mirrors.
> 
> On 8 March 2009 at 19:01, Emmanuel Charpentier wrote:
> | As far as I can see (but I might be nearsighted), I see no model linking
> | package download to package use(s). Data may or may not become available
> 
> Which is why Debian (and Ubuntu) use the _opt-in package_ popularity-contest
> that collects data on packages used and submits that to a host collecting the
> data.  This drives the so-called 'popcon' statistics.
> 
> Yes, and there are many ways in which one can criticise this data collection
> process.   But I fail to see how __not having any data__ leads to more
> informed decisions.
> 
> Once you have data, you have an option of using or discarding it. But if you
> have no data, you have no option.  How is that better?

I've also created a package named PopCon here:

http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/twiki/pub/Main/JeffreyHorner/PopCon_0.1.tar.gz

I provided it to the list many months ago and got no response on it's 
implementation or use. I encourage anyone to download it and understand 
how it can be used to implement a popularity contest for both packages 
and even functions and such.

Maybe R can sponsor a Popularity Contest day where everyone is 
encouraged to download the package and "push" some data to r-project.org 
or even crantastic.org that notes what useRs currently have loaded on 
their search path...

Best,


Jeff
-- 
http://biostat.mc.vanderbilt.edu/JeffreyHorner