What is the meaning of the website name?
Why is this website called R Is My Hammer? Simple really. There is a colloquialism called Maslow's Hammer: When you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Through the years, this has morphed into several versions:
- To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
- If your only tool is a hammer then every problem looks like a nail.
- Give a young boy a hammer, and he will treat everything as a nail.
No one is certain of the origins of these sayings.
In my case, I use R for everything in data science. It was the tool I selected from the beginning. OK, I did not really choose it. The first data science certification course I took was the Johns Hopkins Data Science Specialization Certification hosted on Coursera. One of the first courses of 10 was an introduction to R. Since then, I have programmed nearly everyday using R. R is the only tool I use. R provides all the tools to collect and tidy data, to perform statistical analysis and create machine learning algorithms and lastly provide a rich environment to develop reproducible research and interactive visualizations. At work I often comment to developers I can perform the same task faster and with much fewer lines of code. If it is data related, R is an excellent choice. Are there other data science tools? Of course there are. The primary alternative to R is Python. I'll save that discussion for a later entry.
Why do I have this website?
There are two primary reasons I have this website:
- I want to spread the love for R. If I am an R enthusiast, I want others to join me. (And we number in the millions.)
- Change the trajectory of my career.