Week 2: Your Computer
 Prof. Jack Reilly
 Fall 2026

Due This Week: Problem Set 2
Lecture: A Practical Guide to Your Computer
Download slides (PDF)
Readings
•	In the course drive, find the file Quarto Example.zip. Unzip the file in the directory on your computer that you use for coursework. Inside the unzipped file, you will find a .qmd file, which has also been compiled into a pdf, html, docx, and rtf files. Read it, and pay special attention to how the .qmd file structure and commands relate to the output in the compiled documents.
•	Recommended reference reading:
–	DV, ch 2
–	The Markdown Guide, https://www.markdownguide.org
–	The Plain Person’s Guide to Plain Text Social Science, ch 3-4 (https://plain-text.co/index.html)
•	Note: The Plain Person’s Guide is a little out of date technically - some of the tools discussed have newer, and better, versions - but the underlying principles and philosophy are what you should pay attention to
Data & Computational Work
There is no major new software to install. However, we will be rendering text to output document types, like pdf, docx, and html. Docx and html files will render without additional software, but .pdfs need extra bits added. If you would like to compile to PDF, run the following lines of code:
install.packages("tinytex")
tinytex::install_tinytex()
This places a small tex installation inside R for you.
Due Next Week: Problem Set 3