Mastering Spark with R

This was an interesting book for me to look through, having no experience with Spark, I was starting with very limited knowledge. Mastering Spark with R did a good job explaining to me as an R user why I would want to incorporate Spark into my data analysis workflow using the “sparlyr” package. What stood out to me is how flexible Spark can be for more advanced data analysis tasks such as regression and even deep learning. I also see a lot of value in the book’s section 12.4 “Shiny”, where the authors demonstrate how to integrate Spark into a Shiny application allowing real-time updating of the data the application is using. If you regularly work with very large data, and/or have access to a Spark server, I can very much see the value in using “sparlyr” to combine the flexibility of R with the computational advantages of Spark. The free version of the book can be read at, https://therinspark.com, and the Kindle / Paperback version of the book can be accessed through this commissioned link: https://amzn.to/3rsqfFO.