Help - Data Visualization Software

Quote from trader#21:

I tried R but it was frustrating. A simple heatmap which takes few clicks in Excel can take full weekend in R.

Most of the stuff I (and most non-quant) traders need is overwhelmingly simple. What takes 100 lines to backtest in Multicharts can take... well, lots of sweat.. in R (or matlab for that matters).

If you can provide links to some newsgroups/resources on R graphics it will be much appreciated.
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Trust me (and dtrader98, and 100s of other actual folks who use R for trading) : you gave up too soon. Check out http://www.quantmod.com for the kind of simple stuff you might think is more practical/realistic than heatmaps, etc;
 
I looked at every link supplied in this thread and have to say that every one of the plots, nomegraphs and heatmaps can *easily* be coded in matlab.

Matlab is cool because its interpreter understands java, perl, sql and you can wrap bits of C up in mex files when you need speed. Very flexible. You can use the right tool for the job where needed.

The problem with matlab is the price. Not a problem if you're at a hedge fund. Huge problem if you a working from home.

What is really annoying is that these days the mathworks guys mostly sit around writing $2000.00 toolboxes. I rarely use any toolboxes and try to write everything using basic matlab which you can do if you are determined.

R is free and I've started looking at it.
 
Quote from 377OHMS:

I looked at every link supplied in this thread and have to say that every one of the plots, nomegraphs and heatmaps can *easily* be coded in matlab.

Matlab is cool because its interpreter understands java, perl, sql and you can wrap bits of C up in mex files when you need speed. Very flexible. You can use the right tool for the job where needed.

The problem with matlab is the price. Not a problem if you're at a hedge fund. Huge problem if you a working from home.

What is really annoying is that these days the mathworks guys mostly sit around writing $2000.00 toolboxes. I rarely use any toolboxes and try to write everything using basic matlab which you can do if you are determined.

R is free and I've started looking at it.
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Does anyone use Octave? It's supposed to be like Matlab but open sourced, and it has some GUI apps for it. I've used it some, wondering if anyone else has opinions on it compared to R or Matlab. Only complaint I have is sometimes it will throw errors which are in the function script, but the errors sometimes are not clear what to do to use the function call properly. Then, I do a search online, but the only things that turn up is the script, no users or forums where people have solved the error.
 
I talked to a lot of people on R vs MATLAB. Like mentioned earlier, matlab can be very expensive with add-ons and training.

The best thing about open source projects such as R is the easily available support on the web.
 
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