Week 3: File Management
 Prof. Jack Reilly
 Fall 2026

Due This Week: Problem Set 3
Lecture: File Management and Version Control
Download slides (PDF)
Readings & Reference Material
•	“Happy Git with R” https://happygitwithr.com/
•	The Plain Person’s Guide to Plain Text Social Science, ch 2 (https://plain-text.co/index.html)
•	Bryan, Jennifer. “Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about version control?”
•	Wickham, Hadley. “Tidy Data”.
•	Kuriwaki, Shiro. “Git for Students in the Social Sciences: A Pitch”
Computer Work
If you do not have one already, create a GitHub account and obtain a GitHub Personal Access Token.
1.	Register a GitHub Account.
2.	(Optional) Install Git. Note: this step is only optional if you use the GitHub Desktop Client; if you use any other client, you must install Git at the command line.
3.	Install a Git Client. I strongly recommend you use the GitHub Desktop Client, which comes with git built-in, so that you do not have to install git separately (and can thus skip step 2).
4.	Get a Personal Access Token and connect your GitHub Desktop Client to GitHub.
5.	(Optional) Start an initial repo. We will do this together in workshop this week, as well, but you can get a head start if you like.
Due Next Week: Problem Set 4