Simple plots in Microsoft Sho

MS Sho is *really* kool. 

Been looking for a while for something like this. With all the fuss being made about data and stats these days it seemed odd to me that the MS camp didn't put out some r/ python-esque data analysis tools. Turns out I just wasn't looking in the right places. "Sho: the .NET Playground for Data" is a nifty, .net-friendly data analysis environment from MS research. It has a kool, R-feeling, console that makes for speedy data exploration.

From the start menu

Sho console

So first of all, data. Getting it into Sho is super easy. 

Generating data: Nifty random functions to generate data:

>>> x = rand(20)
>>> x
[ 0.9505  0.7515  0.7579  0.6926  0.7209  0.2979  0.3866  0.4590  ...4 cols...  0.5072  0.6721  0.9819  0.2756  0.0660  0.1953  0.9479  0.1866]

Reading data from a delimited file: 

Use 'dlmreadJaggedArray' with a specified delimiter

Reading data from SQL server (of course!): 

Easiest thing ever - connecting to a local, default instance, using windows authentication, 

Ok so now some simple plots:

>>> x = rand(20)
>>> y = rand(20)
>>> plot(x)

>>> plot(x,'.')

>>> plot(x,y,'.')

>>> bar(x)

>>> hist(x)

Notice the awesome "number of bins" slider!!

so these commands pull up a new window with the plots, however!! you can use some 'show' commands to view the plots in the console itself (except for the histogram :/ )

So that's some Sho basics, but what's kool is that you can do all this from other .net languages!!

Here's how you make a histogram from c#:

            DoubleArray y1 = ArrayRandom.RandomDoubleArray(20);

            //histogram control
            ShoHistControl hist1 = new ShoHistControl(y1, 6);
            hist1.Width = 620;
            hist1.Height = 460;
            hist1.Location = new Point(1, 1);

            //form to display histogram control
            Form f1 = new Form();
            f1.Text = "Histogram 1";
            f1.Width = 640;
            f1.Height = 480;
            f1.MaximizeBox = false;
            
            f1.Controls.Add(hist1);

            f1.ShowDialog();


produces this:

basic scatter/ line/ bar plots are easier, you don't need to create a form to contain it, so this is all you need:

            int[] x = { 1, 2, 2, 8, 2, 3, 2, 1 };
            int[] y = { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 };

            IFigure fig1 = ShoPlotHelper.Figure();


            fig1.Plot(x, y, ".");

to produce this!:

So long story short, MS Sho is super fun and I for one am going to continue finding reasons to use it. One of the biggest advantages in my opinion is now I have a simple option for making quick, stand-alone dashboard applications which are easy to distribute to clients, something which was trickier to do with R.

Anyway folks, hope this is helpful to someone, any questions/ comments/ corrections are surely welcome.

oh P.S!! the guys at MS research did a great job of documenting all this, you can find out everything you need to know about Sho at their documentation page


update:

Plot from powershell!:

add-type -Path "C:\Program Files (x86)\Sho 2.1\bin\ShoArray.dll"
add-type -Path "C:\Program Files (x86)\Sho 2.1\bin\ShoViz.dll"

$r = 2.7
$x = 0.7
$x1 = 0

#number of iterations
$i=100

$i1 = $i

$points = [ShoNS.Array.FloatArray]::Zeros($i)
$xAxis = @()

while($i -gt 0){
    $x1 = $r * ($x - ($x * $x) )
    $points[$i1-$i] = $x1
    $xAxis += @($i1-$i)
    $x = [System.Decimal]::Parse($x1)
    $i --
}

$vis = [ShoNS.Visualization.ShoPlotHelper]::Figure()

$vis.Plot($xAxis, $points)