The Accidental Consultant

摘要

Losing your job is the typical reason for becoming a freelance consultant. That's what happened to me, but it wasn't exactly a straight line from ex-employee to freelancer. Several years ago, I worked at a hedge fund whose niche was something called spread trading, exploiting small discrepancies within the financial markets. The Great Financial Crisis of 2008 brought the demise of the fund and pink slips for the employees, including me. The job market was awful, making reemployment a dim possibility. With the gracious support of my wife, I decided to write a book on R, the statistical software system. Very fortunately, I landed a writing contract and finished the book while R was becoming a hot topic. Honestly, my motivation for writing was pretty simple. I had accumulated about 200 'recipes' for common tasks. I wanted to share them with others. I thought a cookbook would help people climb R's learning curve.