Chapter 3. Unleashing the Power of R from Within

In the first chapter we introduced you to a number of general terms and concepts related to Big Data. In Chapter 2, Introduction to R Programming Language and Statistical Environment, we presented you with several frequently used methods for data management, processing, and analysis using the R language and its statistical environment. In this chapter we will merge both topics and attempt to explain how you can use powerful mathematical and data modeling R packages in large datasets, without the need for distributed computing. After reading this chapter you should be able to:

• Understand R's traditional limitations for Big Data analytics and how they can be resolved
• Use R packages such as ff, ffbase, ffbase2, and bigmemory to enhance out-of-memory performance
• Apply statistical methods to large R objects through the biglm and ffbase packages
• Enhance the speed of data processing with R libraries supporting parallel computing...