R Applications – 9 Real-world Use Cases of R programming

What is R used for R ? R Applications across 9 sectors

Data Science and Big Data have proved themselves useful and even necessary in many different fields and industries today. It helps them to keep up with the trends and capitalize on every opportunity.

R acts as a tool, used to make sense of big data and to gain use from it. R has also proved itself usefulness in research by processing large amounts of data in less time.

Let’s take a look at an interesting fact. “According to O’Reilly, R is the most-used data science language after SQL.”

In this article, we will explore the various R applications in the real world.

Applications of R Programming

Let’s start from the beginning and explore the uses of R for research purposes:

R in Research and Academics

R is a statistical research tool. It is still used by statisticians and students to perform various statistical computations and analyses. Statistical techniques like linear and non-linear modeling, time-series analysis, classification, classical statistic tests, clustering, and others are all implemented by R and its libraries.

R is also used for machine learning research and deep learning as well. With libraries that facilitate monitored and unmonitored learning, R is one of the most commonly used languages for machine learning.

Other research involving large data sets like big data, finding genetic anomalies and patterns, various drug compositions, all use R to sift through a large collection of relevant data and to draw meaningful conclusions from it.

R Use Cases in Research & Academics

• Cornell University: Cornell recommends their researchers and students to use R for all their researches involving statistical computing.
• UCLA: The University of California, Los Angeles uses R to teach statistics and data analysis to its students.

Apart from research, R also has its applications in IT companies.

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R in IT Sector

IT companies not only use R for their own business intelligence but offer such services to other small, medium and large scale businesses as well. They use it for their machine learning products too.

They use R to build statistical computing tools and data handling products and to create other data manipulation services.

Some big IT companies that use R:

• Accenture
• IBM
• Infosys
• Paytm
• Tata Consultancy Services
• Wipro

R Use Cases in IT Sector

• Mozilla: Mozilla uses R to visualize web activity for their browser firefox.
• Microsoft: Microsoft uses R as a statistical engine within the Azure Machine Learning framework. They also use it for the Xbox matchmaking service.
• Foursquare: R works behind-the-scenes on Foursquare’s recommendation engine.
• Google: Google uses R to improve its search results, to provide better search suggestions, to calculate the ROI of their advertising campaigns, to increase the efficiency of online advertising and to predict their economic activity.

R in Finance

Other than the finance sector which industry will be dealing more with statistics as R is a statistical programming language.

R and data science find widespread use in the finance sector. R provides an advanced statistical suite for all the financial tasks and computations. Moving averages, auto-regression, time-series analysis, stock-market modeling, financial data mining, downside risk assessment are all easily done through R and its libraries.

R is also used to support the business decision-making process. R’s data visualization powers can represent the findings of data analysis in multiple graphical formats like candlestick charts, density plots, and drawdown plots of high quality.

This helps the business minds to connect with the technical aspect of data analyses and their results. Companies like American Express, Bajaj Allianz Insurance, JP Morgan and Standard Chartered use R.

R Use Cases in Finance

• Lloyds of London: Lloyds of London use R for risk analysis.
• Bajaj Allianz Insurance: Bajaj Allianz uses R to make their upsell propensity models and recommendation engines. They also use it to mine data and generate actionable insights to improve customer experience.

The digital revolution has changed the world drastically. One of the most prominent changes is the fact that marketplaces have moved to the internet. The E-commerce industry makes heavy usage of R for varying purposes.

Check the various Features of R that you didn’t know about

R in E-commerce

In the field of finance and retail, analytics is useful for risk assessment and to devise marketing-strategy. E-commerce goes beyond that in its usage of data science. E-commerce companies use R to improve the user’s experience on their site as well as for marketing and finance purposes. They use R to improve cross-product selling. When a customer is buying a product the site suggests additional products that complement their original purchase. These suggestions also work for products purchased by the customer in the past. Internet-based companies like various e-commerce sites gather and process structured and unstructured data from varying sources. R proves to be highly useful for this.

Apart from this, R is also used to help with marketing-strategy, targeted advertising, sales modeling, and financial data processing.

R Use Cases in E-commerce

• Amazon: Amazon uses R and data analysis to improve their cross-product suggestions.
• Flipkart: Flipkart uses R for predictive analysis which helps them with targetted advertisements.

Social media is the most common generator of big data today. Therefore, the most advanced and cutting-edge uses of data science can be found in the social media industry.

If you have any queries in R applications till now, mention in the comment section.

R in Social Media

Social media companies like Facebook use R for behavior analysis and sentiment analysis. They can alter and improve their suggestions to users based on the user’s history, and the mood and tone of their recent posts and viewed content. The advertisements shown to the user are also adjusted according to user sentiment and history. R is also used to analyze traffic, user sessions, and content, all in an effort to improve user experience.

R Use Cases in Social Media

• Facebook: Facebook uses R to predict colleague interactions and update its social network graph.
• Twitter: Twitter uses R for semantic clustering. They also use it for data visualization.

Another sector making great use of R’s statistical computation abilities is the banking sector.

R in Banking

Banking firms use R for credit risk modeling and other forms of risk analytics. Banks often use R along with other proprietary software like SAS. It is also used for fraud detection, mortgage haircut modeling, stat modeling, volatility modeling, loan stress test simulation, client assessment, and much more. Apart from statistics, banks also use R for business intelligence and data visualization.

Another use of R is in the calculation of customer segmentation, customer quality, and customer retention.

R Use Cases in Banking

• ANZ: ANZ bank uses R for credit risk modeling and also in models for mortgage loss.
• Bank of America: Bank of America uses R for financial reporting and to calculate financial losses.

The healthcare industry is not one to be left behind when it comes to cutting-edge technologies:

R in Healthcare

With R, you can crunch data and process information, providing an essential backdrop for further analysis and data processing. Genetics, drug discovery, bioinformatics, epidemiology, etc. are some fields in the healthcare industry that use R heavily. It is used to analyze and predict the spreading of various diseases, for analyzing genetic sequences, to analyze drug-safety data, and to analyze various permutations and combinations of drugs and chemicals as well. R’s Bioconductor package provides facilities for analyzing genomic data. Lastly, R is a god-send for pre-clinical trials of all new drugs and medical techniques.

R Use Case in Healthcare

Merck: Merck & co. use the R programming language for clinical trials and drug testing.

Manufacturing companies also use R to make use of big data and to be ahead of the curve.

R in Manufacturing

Various manufacturing companies use R to complement their marketing and business strategies. They analyze customer feedback to help streamline and improve their products. They also use the data to support their marketing strategies. Predicting demand and market trends to adjust their manufacturing practices is yet another use of R and data analytics.

R Use Cases in Manufacturing

• Ford Motor Company: Ford uses R for statistical analyses to support its business strategy and to analyze customer sentiment about its product which helps them in improving their future designs.
• John Deere: John Deere uses R to forecast demand for their products and spare parts. They also use it to forecast crop yield and use that data for their business strategy and to meet market demand and downturns.

Every government has to handle a large amount of data. A country’s worth of data! Many governmental departments across the world use R as well.

R in Governmental Use

Many governmental departments use R for record-keeping and processing their censuses. This helps them in effective law-making and governance. They also use it for essential services like drug regulation, weather forecasting, disaster-impact analysis and much more.

R Use Cases in Governmental Activities

• Food and Drug Administration: FDA uses R for drug evaluation and to perform pre-clinical trials. It also uses R to predict possible reactions and medical issues caused by various food products.
• National Weather Service: The National Weather Service uses R for weather forecast and for disaster prediction. They also use it to visualize their forecasts and predictions to analyze the areas affected.

Summary

In this article of R applications, we learned about the various sectors and industries using R. We also explored the various purposes these industries use R for. Then, we looked at some companies that use R to satisfy their various needs.

Earlier R was used for research and academic purposes only but the times have changed and you can find R being used in every industry from IT, finance to healthcare.

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