Archive for the ‘language’ Category

The Art of R by Norman Matloff

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Free download from the Three-Toed Sloth, buy the current book, here.

R is the world’s most popular programming language for statistical computing. Drug developers use it to evaluate clinical trials and determine which medications are safe and effective; archaeologists use it to sift through mounds of artifacts and track the spread of ancient civilizations; and actuaries use it to assess financial risks and keep economies running smoothly. In The Art of R Programming, veteran author Norman Matloff takes readers on a guided tour of this powerful language, from basic object types and data structures to graphing, parallel processing, and much more. Along the way, readers learn about topics including functional and object-oriented programming, low-level code optimization, and interfacing R with C++ and Python. Whether readers are doing academic research, designing aircraft, or forecasting the weather, R is the tool of choice for statistical application development, and The Art of R Programming is the definitive guide to learning R.

Edward Sapir on Language

Speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. It seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. Yet it needs but a moment’s reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. The process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk. In the case of the latter function, culture, in other words, the traditional body of social usage, is not seriously brought into play. The child is individually equipped, by the complex set of factors that we term biological heredity, to make all the needed muscular and nervous adjustments that result in walking. Indeed, the very conformation of these muscles and of the appropriate parts of the nervous system may be said to be primarily adapted to the movements made in walking and in similar activities. In a very real sense the normal human being is predestined to walk, not because his elders will assist him to learn the art, but because his organism is prepared from birth, or even from the moment of conception, to take on all those expenditures of nervous energy and all those muscular adaptations that result in walking. To put it concisely, walking is an inherent, biological function of man. : Read the rest :

Twitter is Killing English?

Actor Ralph Fiennes made headlines last week when he claimed that the rise of social networking is ruining the English language, stating that "I think we’re living in a time when our ears are attuned to a flattened and truncated sense of our English language, so this always begs the question, is Shakespeare relevant? But I love this language we have and what it can do, and aside from that I think the themes in his plays are always relevant." (Source)

What do you think?

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There is Not Enough Africa in Computers

Brian Eno talks about music and technology from 1995.

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Spanish Language Computer Released

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How to Be a Public Speaker

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Speaking begets speaking. Once you’ve created a presentation (or two) that’s closely aligned with your book and will be entertaining to your target audience, practice more than you think is a sane amount of practice. Then keep going. Not so that you sound like an automaton, but so that you know the material so well, you can adjust it in the moment.

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Split Second Persuasion

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The European Internet Language Barrier

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According to a new study released Wednesday by Eurobarometer, the public opinion research wing of the European Commission, over half of EU Internet users occasionally use a language online that is not their native language. The study also found that 90 percent of EU Internet users prefer to use sites in their own language.

However, according to the study, 44 percent of such users felt that they were missing something interesting online because some websites are not in a language that they understand. The Eurobarometer survey questioned 500 people in each of the 27 member states, or a total of 13,500 people.

"If we are serious about making every European digital, we need to make sure that they can understand the web content they want," wrote Neelie Kroes, the EU’s comissioner for the digital agenda, in a statement. "We are developing new technologies that can help people that cannot understand a foreign language."

.:dw-world.de->

Science Nation : Talk to the Animals