We strongly recommend using either OneDrive or Dropbox to store your files. They are both cloud-based storage that works fairly seemlesly on your laptop. Which one to choose? OneDrive is provided by Middlebury College for free.
You’ll want to install the OneDrive client on your laptop. Go to Middlebury ITS Wiki for OneDrive and at the top, select either Mac or PC.
Life is easier when things are organized. Before diving into the course, organize! If you are having problems seeing the folders in the video, be sure to zoom in.
R is a popular open-source programming language. “Open-source” means that anyone can look under the hood of the language, make modifications, and contribute code to the project. R was originally designed for academic statistical analysis, and while it’s evolved beyond that, it’s still a creature of its roots.
To get going in this class, we’ll need to install two pieces of software. The first is the R language. The second is RStudio, a popular IDE (“Integrated Development Environment”) which makes it much easier to work in R. While R and RStudio are clearly related (you need R to run RStudio), they are different things maintained and developed by different groups of people. Pretty much all the coding we do in this class will happen in RStudio, using R.
To install R go to “https://www.r-project.org” and click the “download R” link. R is hosted on a website called CRAN, which is distributed (“mirrored”) across computers all over the world. To download R, you’ll need to choose a mirror to download it from. (It doesn’t really matter which mirror you choose, but a good rule of thumb is to choose a mirror that is geographically close to you.) Once you’ve chosen a mirror, you’ll be guided to a page with links to download R for whatever your operating system is. Download the appropriate file and go through the installation process. The video below will show you how this process looks on a Mac.
To download RStudio, go to “https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/#download”. You’ll again be able to choose a download link based on your operating system, but won’t need to choose a mirror. Download the appropriate file and go through the installation process. The video below will show you how this process looks on a Mac.
There are many versions of R. Which version should you use? In general, “the latest one”. As I write this the latest version is 4.0.2, “Taking Off Again”.
In addition to machine-friendly numbers, R versions also have user-friendly names. (My personal laptop currently uses 3.6.3, “Holding the Windsock”.)
Which version of RStudio should you use? Again, in general, “the latest”. As I write this the latest version is 1.3.1073. Unfortunately RStudio versions don’t have fun names.
Using an older version isn’t necessarily a problem. As long as important features/packages aren’t missing/broken it should be fine. But sometimes an update will change something substantial and packages built for the new version won’t work with the old ones anymore (this happened between versions 3.5.x and 3.6.x). If that happens, no problem—just get the latest version and everything should be fine (you’ll probably want to uninstall the older version to make sure there’s no confusion).
Updating can take some time, so you shouldn’t do it every time you start up R or RStudio. I keep the older version on my laptop because updating would require me to reinstall all my packages and new packages I install are still compatible with 3.6.3. If you’re just getting started or haven’t used R in a while, it’s a good idea to get the latest versions.