Best way to use R in Ruby

Question

I want to visualize some of my statistical caluclations in Ruby.

My problem is, that I can\'t find the right gem for that.

rsruby doesn\'t seem to be up-to-date

Answer 1

As @Hansi mentioned, RServe is the best way I've found to run R remotely. If you're using Ruby from a web-context especially, RServe can offer some nice benefits.

Best of all (in my mind), you don't get locked into any one programming framework, as there are RServe clients for a variety of languages including Java and C++. When using web-accessible platforms, you can even keep Rserve running on a separate host and route traffic over TCP/IP for added security.

Answer 2

I just saw this post and thought I should comment since I use R pretty extensively. If you are coming from an R background the best gem I have found is Rinruby. The reason it is fantastic is because you don't interpret the commands in ruby, you use actual R code. For example:

require "rinruby"      
#Set all your variables in Ruby
n = 10
beta_0 = 1
beta_1 = 0.25
alpha = 0.05
seed = 23423
R.x = (1..n).entries
#Use actual R code to perform the analysis
R.eval <<EOF
  set.seed(#{seed})
  y <- #{beta_0} + #{beta_1}*x + rnorm(#{n})
  fit <- lm( y ~ x )
  est <- round(coef(fit),3)
  pvalue <- summary(fit)$coefficients[2,4]
EOF

On the Rinruby website I listed above there are some fantastic examples to get you started. Hope this helped.

-Sean