R is an open source statistics and analytics program that is both widely used and supports virtually every method relevant to its domain. Packages extend the functionality of R and are generally created by experts in their field. The ones listed below are some of the more popular packages for various data mining tasks.
Association Rules Mining
arules
Provides the infrastructure for representing, manipulating and analyzing transaction data and patterns (frequent itemsets and association rules). Also provides interfaces to C implementations of the association mining algorithms Apriori and Eclat by C. Borgelt.
arulesSequences
Add-on for arules to handle and mine frequent sequences.
arulesViz
Various visualization techniques for association rules and itemsets. The packages also includes several interactive visualizations for rule exploration. This package extends package arules.
Bayes
bclust
The package builds a dendrogram with log posterior as a natural distance defined by the model. It is also capable to computing Bayesian discrimination probabilities equivalent to the implemented Bayesian clustering. Spike-and-Slab models are adopted in a way to be able to produce an importance measure for clustering and discriminant variables. The method works properly for data with small sample size and high dimensions.
bayesm
bayesm covers many important models used in marketing and micro-econometrics applications. The package includes: Bayes Regression (univariate or multivariate dep var), Bayes Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR), Binary and Ordinal Probit, Multinomial Logit (MNL) and Multinomial Probit (MNP), Multivariate Probit, Negative Binomial (Poisson) Regression, Multivariate Mixtures of Normals (including clustering), Dirichlet Process Prior Density Estimation with normal base, Hierarchical Linear Models with normal prior and covariates, Hierarchical Linear Models with a mixture of normals prior and covariates, Hierarchical Multinomial Logits with a mixture of normals prior and covariates, Hierarchical Multinomial Logits with a Dirichlet Process prior and covariates, Hierarchical Negative Binomial Regression Models, Bayesian analysis of choice-based conjoint data, Bayesian treatment of linear instrumental variables models, and Analysis of Multivariate Ordinal survey data with scale usage heterogeneity
Partition Based Clustering
cluster – cluster analysis
fpc
Various methods for clustering and cluster validation. Fixed point clustering. Linear regression clustering. Clustering by merging Gaussian mixture components. Symmetric and asymmetric discriminant projections for visualisation of the separation of groupings. Cluster validation statistics for distance based clustering including corrected Rand index. Cluster-wise cluster stability assessment. Methods for estimation of the number of clusters: Calinski-Harabasz, Tibshirani and Walther’s prediction strength, Fang and Wang’s bootstrap stability. Gaussian/multinomial mixture fitting for mixed continuous/categorical variables. Variable-wise statistics for cluster interpretation. DBSCAN clustering. Interface functions for many clustering methods implemented in R, including estimating the number of clusters with kmeans, pam and clara. Modality diagnosis for Gaussian mixtures.
Neural Networks
neuralnet
Training of neural networks using backpropagation, resilient backpropagation with or without weight backtracking or the modified globally convergent version. The package allows flexible settings through custom-choice of error and activation function. Furthermore, the calculation of generalized weights is implemented.
nnet
Software for feed-forward neural networks with a single hidden layer, and for multinomial log-linear models.
RSNNS
The Stuttgart Neural Network Simulator (SNNS) is a library containing many standard implementations of neural networks. This package wraps the SNNS functionality to make it available from within R. Using the RSNNS low-level interface, all of the algorithmic functionality and flexibility of SNNS can be accessed. Furthermore, the package contains a convenient high-level interface, so that the most common neural network topologies and learning algorithms integrate seamlessly into R.
Random Forest
randomForest
Classification and regression based on a forest of trees using random inputs.
Regression
nlme (Linear and Nonlinear Mixed Effects Models)
Fit and compare Gaussian linear and nonlinear mixed-effects models.
Regression Trees
rpart
Recursive partitioning and regression trees.
Social Network Analysis and Graph Mining
igraph
Routines for simple graphs and network analysis. igraph can handle large graphs very well and provides functions for generating random and regular graphs, graph visualization, centrality indices and much more.
sna
A range of tools for social network analysis, including node and graph-level indices, structural distance and covariance methods, structural equivalence detection, network regression, random graph generation, and 2D/3D network visualization.
Support Vector Machine
e1071
Functions for latent class analysis, short time Fourier transform, fuzzy clustering, support vector machines, shortest path computation, bagged clustering, naive Bayes classifier, …
kernlab
Kernel-based machine learning methods for classification, regression, clustering, novelty detection, quantile regression and dimensionality reduction. Among other methods kernlab includes Support Vector Machines, Spectral Clustering, Kernel PCA, Gaussian Processes and a QP solver.
Text Mining
RTextTools
RTextTools is a machine learning package for automatic text classification that makes it simple for novice users to get started with machine learning, while allowing experienced users to easily experiment with different settings and algorithm combinations. The package includes nine algorithms for ensemble classification (svm, slda, boosting, bagging, random forests, glmnet, decision trees, neural networks, maximum entropy), comprehensive analytics, and thorough documentation.
tm
A framework for text mining applications within R.
topicmodels
Provides an interface to the C code for Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) models and Correlated Topics Models (CTM) by David M. Blei and co-authors and the C++ code for fitting LDA models using Gibbs sampling by Xuan-Hieu Phan and co-authors.
Time Series Analysis
dtw
A comprehensive implementation of dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithms in R. DTW computes the optimal (least cumulative distance) alignment between points of two time series. Common DTW variants covered include local (slope) and global (window) constraints, subsequence matches, arbitrary distance definitions, normalizations, minimum variance matching, and so on. Provides cumulative distances, alignments, specialized plot styles, etc.
forecast
Methods and tools for displaying and analysing univariate time series forecasts including exponential smoothing via state space models and automatic ARIMA modelling.
Weka
Weka Interface
An R interface to Weka. Weka is a collection of machine learning algorithms for data mining tasks written in Java, containing tools for data pre-processing, classification, regression, clustering, association rules, and visualization. Package RWeka contains the interface code, the Weka jar is in a separate package RWekajars. For more information on Weka see here.