A couple of recent projects have meant that I had to get to grips more seriously with R and with MATLAB. Regular readers will know that I am a die-hard IgorPro user. Trying to tackle a new IDE is a frustrating experience, as anyone who has tried to speak a foreign language will know. The speed with which you can do stuff (or get your point across) is very slow. Not only that, but… if you could just revert to your mother tongue it would be so much easier…
What I needed was something like a Babel Fish. As I’m sure you’ll know, this fish is the creation of Douglas Adams. It allows instant translation of any language. The only downside is that you have to insert the fish into your ear.
The closest thing to the Babel Fish in computing is the cheat sheet. These sheets are typically a huge list of basic commands that you’ll need as you get going. I found a nice page which had cheat sheets which allowed easy interchange between R, MATLAB and python. There was no Igor version. Luckily, a user on IgorExchange had taken the R and MATLAB page and added some Igor commands. This was good, but it was a bit rough and incomplete. I took this version, formatted it for GitHub flavored markdown, and made some edits.
The repo is here. I hope it’s useful for others. I learned a lot putting it together. If you are an experienced user of R, MATLAB or IGOR (or better still can speak one or more of these languages), please fork and make edits or suggest changes via GitHub issues, or by leaving a comment on this page if you are not into GitHub. Thanks!
Here is a little snapshot to whet your appetite. Bon appetit!
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The post title is taken from “The International Language of Screaming” by Super Furry Animals from their Radiator LP. Released as a single, the flip-side had a version called NoK which featured the backing tracking to the single. Gruff sings the welsh alphabet with no letter K.