Preliminaries

Assignment 1: Hello & Welcome to R (Due Week 1)

Readings

• Read the course syllabus (all parts of this website)
• Recommended reading:
  • RDS, introduction

Data & Computational Work

The main purpose of this week’s assignment is to get your computer ready for all the work in the class. This means, primarily, installing software.

Install R on your computer

Begin by installing R (https://cloud.r-project.org). Choose the version appropriate for your computing platform:

• If you use macOS with an Apple Silicon processor (i.e. an M-series or possibly A-series processor), then install R for macOS’s Apple Silicon build (also known as arm64). This version does not work on older, Intel-based Macs.

• If you use macOS with an Intel processor, then install R for macOS’s Intel build (also known as x86; it’s further down the same page). Note that if you install this on an M-class processor, it will work (for now) but will run slower, and it will stop working a year or so from now: macOS 27 (Golden Gate) is the last version of macOS to include Rosetta, the translation layer that lets Intel software run on Apple Silicon.

• If you use Microsoft Windows, then install R for Windows.¹

• If you use Linux, I trust you know what you’re doing: choose your distribution and install the R package for it.²

Install Positron (or RStudio) on your computer

• You can use either Positron or RStudio in class. RStudio is the venerable, older, stable IDE; Positron is a newer IDE from the same company that builds in additional functionality but can be a little more complicated.

  • Download Positron here

  • Download RStudio here

• Make sure to choose the proper version for your operating system and chip architecture. If you’re unsure what that means, ask me!

Confirm things work

• R is really a great big calculator. Let’s do some calculations! Using the console³:
  • Add 2 and 3 together
  • Multiply 4 by 6
  • Divide 10 by 5

Due Next Week: Problem Set 1: Hello & Welcome to R

Footnotes

1. Windows ARM support in R is still experimental, so don’t worry about it; just run the standard Windows installer.

2. Note: technically, it is possible to install R on a Chromebook using the Linux subsystem, which you can install yourself. But if you’ve never run Linux before, this is a bad idea: most Chromebooks are too slow to run things like R locally, working with the Chromebook filesystem is finicky, and using IDEs and local storage is not always straightforward. If you know what you’re doing: go for it! But this is not the route for beginners new to R and working with code.

3. If you’re not sure what I mean here, wait until the first lab day!