Setup Instructions

 

During the course we will be using both R and RStudio. Please follow the instructions under Core Software and Get the Data headings before starting the course. No worries if you are having problems installing the software, we’ll run a drop-in session from 14:00 - 15:00 on Tuesday 5^th December on Blackboard Collaborate to troubleshoot installation problems. Alternatively you can email one of the instructors prior to the course.
 

Core Software

Install R. Install the latest version of R (4.3.2). Download and install R for Windows, Mac (download the latest R-4.x.x.pkg file for your appropriate version of Mac OS) or linux (choose your flavour of linux).

Install RStudio. Download and install RStudio Desktop.

You will need to download and install R and RStudio separately. R is the underlying statistical computing environment. RStudio is a graphical integrated development environment (IDE) that makes using R a little easier. You need to install R before you install RStudio.

 

See Section 1.1 and 1.2 of our Introduction to R book for more details about installing R and RStudio. We have also produced a video walking you through the process of installing R and RStudio and also a brief introduction to RStudio.

 

 

And see this video for a short introduction to using RStudio.

 

 

Get the Data

Click the Data link on the navbar at the top of the course website and follow one of the two options described. You can either download all the data needed by downloading this zip file or by downloading individual data sets as needed at the Data page. If you download the zip file you will need to use your favourite software to uncompress this file (although most operating systems now have at least one built-in (un)compression tool).

 

R markdown

Installing R markdown is not required for this course. However, for those of you who are interested in using R markdown to create reproducible reports (or websites like this one!) follow these instructions to install R markdown on your computer. Although we will only scratch the surface of R markdown during this course we plan to run a webinar on this subject in the near future.

 

A few notes:

• If you’re using Windows you might see errors about not having permission to modify the existing libraries – disregard these. You can avoid this by running RStudio as an administrator (right click the RStudio icon, then click “Run as Administrator”).
• If you really dislike using RStudio (or just fancy a change) then feel free to use an alternative IDE or script editor (see FAQ).