The required software for this workshop is all free and open source and will run identically on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux platforms.
There are three main pieces of software to install:
- R: An environment for statistical computing.
- Rstudio: An integrated development environment for using R.
- tidyverse: A bundle of R packages to use R the modern way.
Go to the R website and follow the links for downloading. On Windows, this should lead you to
Downloading this and following the usual Windows installation process, you'll then have a full working version of R.
On Macs, the installation procedure is essentially identical. The latest Mac installer should be available at
Download this and follow the usual Mac installation process to get a full working version of R for Macs.
Using Rstudio is not strictly necessary to use R. However, RStudio is now by far the most common way of using R. To install it, go to the Rstudio website, specifically to
which will list all the available installers. Note that you just want the Rstudio desktop program. The Rstudio server is something else (basically it is for providing remote access to Rstudio hosted on Linux servers).
Again, you'll just follow the usual installation process for Windows or Macs to install Rstudio using these installers.
The so-called tidyverse is a collection of interrelated R packages that implement essentially a new standard library for R. In other words, the tidyverse gives us a bundle tools for doing commonplace data manipulation and visualization and programming. It represents the modern way to use R, and in my opinion, it's the best way to use R. All the tidyverse packages can be installed by typing the following command in R:
install.packages("tidyverse")The main packages that are contained within the tidyverse bundle are listed here.
If you would rather not install R/RStudio on your own machine, or you have difficulty doing so now, you have the option of using RStudio online using RStudio Cloud. This is a full featured version on RStudio that runs in a web browser using the RStudio Server technology. The only drawback is that you only get 15 hours per month for free (you get unlimited access if you willing to pay; though it is quite expensive). However, 15 hours is just enough for this 2 day course.