Not a function, but a java object... SortedMap saves my ass all the time. Be it market-basket analysis, or selecting top k individuals in an evolutionary algorithm xD

You do analysis in java?

@Charmgoggles well to run Hadoop and implement an algorithm, yes I used Java to print out a file with association rules. But statistical analysis with Java? Awh hell no. I rather use Python. Or R, but I hate R.

@honeyBadgerJeff why don't you like R? Is it too different from Java and other languages?

@Charmgoggles *dat moment I checked your profile and saw that you are an R developer. Oops!* in a single word, yes, it is too different. I really like the formality of Java for one. R is great due to the packages provided by the community. It helped me a lot running regressions, but I preferred to write my own principal compinent analysis functions, mainly because I was instructed to use a different definition of loadings (as per Everitt et al.). R is really targeted at statisticians, I find. Right now I prefer putting my time into Python because of its versatility, and well, most of my peers use it.

@honeyBadgerJeff hehe, well I almost exclusively work in R, but I dabble in Python as well. I agree that it's primarily a statisticians tool, or it used to be. I guess it is a strange and unstandardized mess, even in base r. I don't blame anyone for their frustrations. But it is a rich community and numerous companies have started using it nowadays. The one big plus is the plotting capabilities I think.