Welcome to the Installing R Tutorial
This tutorial was developed based on this resource. The goal is to make sure you have R and Rstudio installed on your computer and make sure you have a folder set up for this class to make your semester go smoother.
Outline
This tutorial will help you set up your computer to use R. It is for you if you need to:
- Install R on your computer
- Install the RStudio IDE
- Get set up with R projects
You can skip this tutorial if you’ve already done these things.
Install R
How to install R
If you need to download R, head over to the CRAN website to download R.
If you’ve already done this, we’ll move to the next step!
Install RStudio
How to install RStudio
RStudio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for R. What does that mean? Well, if you think of R as a language, which it is, you can think of RStudio as a program that helps you write and work in the language. RStudio makes programming in R much easier and I suggest that you use it!
If you need to download RStudio, head over to the RStudio website to download RStudio. There are also some helpful tutorials on this website!
If you’ve already done this, we’ll move to the next step!
R Projects
R projects make it easy to keep files relating to the same content organized. I recommend making a folder and an R project for this class. This will allow you to keep all of your data files, notes, and homowork code in one (organized) place on your computer.
Guide to RStudio IDE and R Projects
Watch this video for a description of the layout of the RStudio interface and a demonstration for how to create an R project on your computer.
Making a class-specific folder and R Project
I will be making a folder and project for this class where I will keep all of my notes and data sets. If you structure your folder the same way I do, all of my code should work seamlessly on your computer!
Check In
Have you created a folder (directory) and an R project for this class on your computer?I also like to keep things organized into sub-folders. For my BIOST 2041 folder, I have the following sub-folders:
- Data
- Labs
- Notes
- Recitation
I keep all data files for the class in “Data” and then files with code and instructions in their corresponding assignment section.
That’s it! The next tutorial will be about using data types, using functions, and downloading packages in R.