Installation, Setup, & R Basics

Overview of Setting up R for PSYC 167

Overview

For this course, we will use the R programming language to create all data visualizations. Although you may have a preferred IDE other than RStudio, my recommendation is to use RStudio. All instructions will assume you are using RStudio. For report documents, we will use the R Markdown language. RStudio projects will be used for managing your work space in order to simplify your working directory and file paths, manage history, and your R Markdown files (e.g., .Rmd) and code script files (.R). These RStudio projects will be version-control projects maintained at a remote repository on GitHub.com. Finally, the Git program will be used to communicate with that remote repository.

Setup Structure

  • Install R and RStudio
  • Create a GitHub account if you do not have one
  • Install Git if your computer system needs it (e.g., not installed)

Other Setup Topics

For those requiring refreshers about R Markdown, functions, and scripts are in this section.