R on the Cloud

"If someone asks me what cloud computing is, I try not to get bogged down with definitions. I tell them that, simply put, cloud computing is a better way to run your business."
- Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce.com

Since I'm not a CEO of a company trying to profit from the cloud, let's get bogged down with a definition. I like the one put forward by Microsoft^TM here--https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/what-is-cloud-computing/.

Simply put, cloud computing is the delivery of computing services--servers, storage, databases, networking, software, analytics, and more--over the Internet ("the cloud"). Companies offering these computing services are called cloud providers and typically charge for cloud computing services based on usage, similar to how you're billed for water or electricity at home.

If you are not using the cloud for machine learning, well I guarantee that at some point in the not-too-distant future, you will. I still know some people who fear the idea of losing control of their data, security issues, and so on. However, as one start-up CEO put it to me, I like to ask them if they access their supposedly secure data on a laptop via WiFi, and when they reply sure, they are telling me they are on the cloud and it is just a matter of where the hardware is stored.

There you have it. Do you want your office dungeon to have rows of servers or do you want to let someone else handle that problem with their secure, redundant, and discrete global infrastructure?

Using cloud-based computing with R can facilitate the seamless work across multiple locations and also provide you with tremendous computing power, which can be quickly scaled up or down as needed. This can be a significant cost saving.

There are many ways to get R on the cloud, but I am going to use Amazon Web Services (AWS) and their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) for this demonstration because it is what I first learned and it is what I'm familiar using. That is not to say I endorse it over other products. I don't and won't, unless Jeff Bezos selects me for a manned space mission, then my attitude shall change.

At any rate, the goal here is to get you up and running with R and RStudio on the cloud quickly and without having to write a line of Linux code. Now, to maximize the power of AWS and its bewildering array of tools, you can learn how to apply Linux code through a Secure Shell (SSH). To do this, we will create and launch a virtual computer known as an instance. We will then login to RStudio via a web browser and cover some of the functionality. There are many tutorials out on the web about how to do this, but my goal is to get you started in the simplest and quickest manner possible, and to get you using R on the cloud TODAY.

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Table of Contents for
R on the Cloud