R Installation

Go here to download a graphical installer of the latest R version (at least v3.2.2) appropriate for your machine’s

• processor (32-bit / 64-bit), and
• operating system (Mac / Windows).

Run the installer and follow its instructions to install the software into a folder you prefer.

It is preferred that the R installation folder path DO NOT CONTAIN BLANK SPACES, because spaces occasionally cause bugs in dependent open-source software packages.

Extra Steps for Windows Users Only

Windows users need one extra step to make sure you can run the command Rscript.exe from the command-line terminal.

• Go to Control Panel > System > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables, look under the System Variable section for the variable Path, and append the following path to the existing text:

  ;<Your R Installation Folder>/bin

  (note that there should be a semi-colon (;) separating the existing path and the appended path, and that there must be no space between that semi-colon and the appended path)

• Open the command-line terminal via Start Menu > Run > cmd. Enter the following command and verify that it returns the folder path containing the Rscript.exe file:

  where Rscript

RStudio Installation

RStudio is the most popular integrated development environment (IDE) for R.

Go here to download a graphical installer of RStudio Desktop appropriate for your machine’s

• processor (32-bit / 64-bit), and
• operating system (Mac / Windows).

Run the installer and follow its instructions to install the software into a folder you prefer.

CRAN Packages Installation

We need to install a number of packages from the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), a repository of open-source packages developed in R.

• First, make sure you have cloned and synchronized the course GitHub repository onto your machine;

• Open the command-line terminal:

  • Mac: via the iTerm app
  • Windows: via Start Menu > Run > cmd;

• Navigate to the [Your Course Repository Folder]/Computing/R/ folder; and

• Run the command Rscript RInstallPackages.R to install the R packages necessary for this course