This workshop requires you to bring your own laptop, or share with someone who has one. Collaboration is strongly encouraged during this workshop.

While we will be providing you with the installers on the first day of the seminar, I urge you to download, explore, and explore R now. Below, I will show you some directions on how you can install R in your own laptop.

R Installation

Windows

  1. Download the installer for R 3.4.3 at https://cran.r-project.org/bin/windows/base/. The file is around 75 megabytes. Download times will vary depending on your connection.
  2. Double click on the installer and follow the instructions.

Below is a video tutorial on installing R and Rstudio, some packages, and some basic operations in R and Rstudio.

Mac OS

  1. Download the installer for R 3.4.3 at https://cran.r-project.org/bin/macosx/. The file is around 75 megabytes. Download times will vary depending on your connection.
  2. Double click on the installer and follow the instructions.

Linux

Follow the instructions in this link: https://cloud.r-project.org/.

Rstudio installation

We will use Rstudio as our Integrated Development Environment (IDE). To download Rstudio, go to https://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/ and download the FREE version of the Rstudio Desktop by clicking on the DOWNLOAD NOW button. Double click on the downloaded file and follow the installation instructions.

Installation of R packages

R packages extend the capability of R for statistical computing and data analysis. R packages are the reason why R is widely used by statisticians all over the world.

The installation of R packages is the same in all types of operating systems. The instructions below is that for Windows.

  1. Hit the Windows Start Key and Look for the logo of R as shown in the image below.
Opening R

Opening R

After you click on the logo, you should see the R console as shown in the figure below.

R console

R console

  1. Copy the following script and paste it into your R console.
install.packages(c("tidyverse", "TeachingDemos", "e1071", "rmarkdown", "knitr", "haven", "readr", "readxl", "agricolae", "mosaic", "aplpack", "Rcmdr", "pwr"))
install.packages("swirl")

It should look like the figure below after you pasted the above code into your R console.

Script for downloading required packages for the workshop

Script for downloading required packages for the workshop

  1. Hit Enter. Choose 0-Cloud [https] as your download mirror.
Choose download mirror

Choose download mirror

  1. Wait for the download and installation to finish.
The packages are being downloaded and installed.

The packages are being downloaded and installed.

Package installation done!

Package installation done!

Start Learning R on Your Own

In the R or Rstudio console, type

library(swirl)
swirl()

Work on every course as thorough and as fast as you can.

Explore Some More about R and Rstudio

There are a lot of free beginner materials and tutorials for learning R and Rstudio. Below are some

  1. books that you can download for free,
  2. sites that contain tips on R, and
  3. videos on how to conduct data analysis and statistics in R.

You can also Google R for more information about this simple, versatile, yet powerful application.