Friday Fortunes

Did you know that R can tell your fortune? Well, it can't. Sorry. But it does have the fortune() function, which displays a random witticism in the R console. The concept is based on the fortune program from Unix, except that the fortunes are all related to R.

To see fortunes in R, you'll first need to install the fortunes package from CRAN:

> install.packages("fortunes")

Then, just load the package and call the fortune() function to see a random fortune:

> library(fortunes)

> fortune()

The Huli of Papua New Guinea use '15' to mean a very large number and '15 times 15 samting (something)' to mean something close to infinity.
   -- David Whiting (in a discussion about trying to estimate the number of R users)
      R-help (April 2004)

You can also see a specific fortune by calling fortune with a number as the argument (as of this writing, there are 221 different fortunes to see). Reader KW suggests a few of his favourites (thanks, KW!):

> # Day 1 of "Intro to R" should include:

> fortune(77)

Firstly, don't call your matrix 'matrix'. Would you call your dog 'dog'? Anyway, it might clash with the function 'matrix'.
   -- Barry Rowlingson
      R-help (October 2004)

> # Optimization is hard: 

> fortune(86)

Thomas Lumley: The algorithm in glm.fit, while not perfect, is a little smarter than a simple IRLS. It uses step-halving to back away from the edge, and when the parameter space is convex it has a reasonable chance of creeping along the boundary to the true MLE.
Peter Dalgaard: Hmm. That wasn't my experience. I had a situation where there was like a (virtual) maximum outside the boundary, and the algorithm would basically stay on the path to that peak, banging its little head into the same point of the wall repeatedly, so to speak.
   -- Thomas Lumley and Peter Dalgaard (about problems with constrained optimzation in GLMs and "the little optimizer that couldn't")
      R-help (November 2004)

> # Revolution R might obsolete:

> fortune(110)

Tradition among experienced S programmers has always been that loops (typically 'for' loops) are intrinsically inefficient: expressing computations without loops has provided a measure of entry into the inner circle of S programming.
   -- John Chambers
      Programming With Data, p. 173 (1998)

> # Would be authors should read:

> fortune(178)

Have you ever wanted to write a book, but not known where to start? Now is a very good time to jump in, because there is currently a very simple recipe for success: just put R in the title and you will have to beat the publishers off with a stick!
   -- Paul Murrell
      ASA Statistical Computing & Graphics Newsletter 17(2) (November 2006)

If you'd like R to brighten your Fridays with a random fortune, create a file called .Rprofile (note the leading dot and lack of extension) in your home directory (this is your My Documents folder on Windows) with the following lines:

require(fortunes)

if(substr(date(),1,3)=="Fri") print(fortune())

# End

(The third line is optional, but ensures the last line of code is completed with a carriage return -- a common error that results in your .Rprofile failing to run the last command.)