RNested – Nested Sampling in R & analysis of spectra

The RNested package is a re-implementation of the main algorithms from the radiospec package into the R statistical data analysis environment. Its advantages compared to radiospec are:

• Very easy install through the R packaging mechanism
• Easy to use and extend with new models
• Naturally good integration with R, which is a very popular environment for doing statistics
• Easy-to-understand code

Installation

To install on source-based R systems (i.e., Linux) you can do simply:

install.packages("RNested", repos=c("http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~bn204/soft/R","http://cran.us.r-project.org"))

On R systems that tend to use binary packages (Windows & OS X), it is easier to install the dependent packages and RNested separately:

install.packages(c("plyr", "foreach", "ks", "plotrix")
install.packages("RNested", repos=c("http://www.mrao.cam.ac.uk/~bn204/soft/R","http://cran.us.r-project.org"), type="source")

Documentation

The RNested package is documented using the standard R environment documentation tools. Therefore it is recommended that you install the package and browse the documentation using help() and vignette() functions. For convenience, here are the links to PDF documentation:

• Reference manual PDF
• One dimensional fitting vignette PDF
• Bayesian Fitting of Spectra of Radio Sources Using Polynomials vignette PDF

Development

Development of RNested is fully open, see the GitHub Repository. The code is licensed under GPL version 2.