Taking Statistical Computing Beyond S and R

• Activity Number: 101
• Type: Invited
• Date/Time: Monday, August 1, 2011 : 8:30 AM to 10:20 AM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistical Computing
• Author(s): Simon Urbanek*+
• Companies: AT&T Labs Research
• Keywords: R ; statistical computing ; object system

Abstract

Aleph is an open-source project to create the next generation of statistical computing software, possibly as a successor to R. The goal is to provide a modern, flexible system suitable for statistical analysis. All aspects of the project are currently experimental and up for discussion. The current experimental implementation is written in C and features its own C-level object system.

Although other approaches were considered, so far we have decided to use the core S/R language as the basis for the Aleph language. The syntax should be very similar such that it should be possible to translate packages from R to Aleph if necessary (not really a requirement but a side-effect). However, some aspects of the language (lazy evaluation, pass-by-value, etc.) are not mandatory. One of the key points is that Aleph has its own object system. Some major features are first-class class objects, fundamentally complete class structure, type matched function arguments.