R help - Jun 2016 - About identification of CRAN CHECK machines in logs

I don't know Hadley. But you can see evidence of "something"
systematically
installing the packages in the log data. From my two CRAN packages I
noticed a high correlation in the number of downloads.

Try the following script, which will pick 5 random packages from CRAN and
calculate the correlation matrix between their differenced number of
downloads. To avoid spurious correlations,  I removed the weekends since we
can expect some seasonality and also the zero entries. Its crude, I know,
but it does shows some positive associations between the number of
installations of the packages.

If not CRAN, who/what is downloading this packages and how can I set it
apart from the actual user installations?

Many thanks!

____
# get packages
df <- as.data.frame(available.packages())

# choose 5 random
idx <- sample(seq(nrow(df)))[1:5]
df<- df[idx,]

my.pkgs <- as.character(df$Package)

#my.pkgs <- c('RndTexExams','GetTDData')

dl.df <- cranlogs::cran_downloads(my.pkgs, from = '2015-01-01', to
Sys.Date())

# remove zeros entries
dl.df$count[dl.df$count==0] <- NA

# remove weekends
dl.df$sat.sun <- as.POSIXlt(dl.df$date)$wday
dl.df <- dplyr::filter(dl.df, sat.sun != 0, sat.sun != 6)

# to wide (for corr)
dl.df <- tidyr::spread(dl.df, key = package,value = count)

# remove na
dl.df <- dl.df[complete.cases(dl.df), ]

diff.mat <- diff(as.matrix(dl.df[,3:ncol(dl.df)]))
cor(diff.mat)

___

On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 6:18 PM, Hadley Wickham <h.wickham at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 9, 2016 at 9:24 AM, Marcelo Perlin <marceloperlin at
gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > I recently released two packages (RndTexExams and GetTDData) in CRAN
and
> > I'm trying to track the number of downloads and location of users.
> >
> > I wrote a simple script to download and analyze the log files in
> http://cran
> > -logs.rstudio.com.
> > I realized, however, that during the release of a new version of the
> > packages there is a spike in the number of downloads. I believe that
the
> > CRAN checks are included in the number of installations of the package
in
> > the log files.
>
> I don't think that's true. Why would CRAN be installing the package
> from a mirror?
>
> Hadley
>
> --
> http://hadley.nz
>


-- 
Marcelo Perlin
Professor Adjunto | Escola de Administra??o
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul
Rua Washington Luiz, 855 | 90010-460| Porto Alegre RS| Brasil
Tel.: (51) 3308-3303 | www.ea.ufrgs.br
http://lattes.cnpq.br/3262699324398819
https://sites.google.com/site/marceloperlin/

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On Fri, Jun 10, 2016 at 8:27 AM, Marcelo Perlin <marceloperlin at
gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know Hadley. But you can see evidence of "something"
systematically
> installing the packages in the log data. From my two CRAN packages I
noticed
> a high correlation in the number of downloads.
>
> Try the following script, which will pick 5 random packages from CRAN and
> calculate the correlation matrix between their differenced number of
> downloads. To avoid spurious correlations,  I removed the weekends since we
> can expect some seasonality and also the zero entries. Its crude, I know,
> but it does shows some positive associations between the number of
> installations of the packages.
Which is not at all surprising:

* there are very strong seasonal patterns
* there are big jumps after releases of new versions of R
* some people like to have all packages installed locally

This is an intrinsic problem with download data. There's no way to
tell if a downloader is really using your package or not.

Hadley

-- 
http://hadley.nz