Installation & Setup
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 as all instructions for the course will be in RStudio. For report documents, we will use the R Markdown language, which integrates easily with RStudio. Moreover, 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 (it’s not already installed)
Other Setup Topics
For those requiring refreshers about R Markdown, functions, and scripts can be found in this topic section.