Software

To use the programming language R, you need to have both the R software downloaded, and a way to interact with that software. We will use the integrated development environment (IDE) RStudio for this task. To install the required software on your computer, please follow the instructions according to your operating system.

Windows

You will need to download R and RStudio separately.

R

First, follow the instructions to download R from the CRAN website for the most recent version. For Fall 2022, we will expect you to be using R-4.2.1

Run the .exe file that was just downloaded and follow the instructions on screen to install the d ownloaded software locally on your computer.

RStudio

Go to the RStudio download page and identify the version for your operating system

Under Installers select RStudio Desktop 2022.02.3+492 (Expected version for Fall 2022) - Windows Vista/7/8/10

Follow the on-screen instructions to download the software and install it on your local machine

Once it’s installed, open RStudio to make sure it works and that you don’t get any error messages.

macOS

You will need to download R & RStudio separtely.

R

Download R from the CRAN website

Select the .pkg file for the latest R version

Double click on the downloaded file to install R

It is also a good idea to install XQuartz (needed by some packages)

RStudio

Go to the RStudio download page

Under Installers select RStudio Desktop 2022.02.3+492 (Expected version for Fall 2022) - Mac OS X 10.6+ (64-bit)

Double click the file to install RStudio

Once it’s installed, open RStudio to make sure it works, and you don’t get any error messages

Linux

Follow the instructions for your distribution from CRAN they provide information to get the most recent version of R for common distributions. For most distributions, you could use your package manager (e.g., for Debian/Ubuntu run sudo apt-get install r-base and for Fedora yum install R, but we don’t recommend this approach as the versions provided by this are usually out of date. In any case, make sure you have at least R 4.1.1.

Go to the RStudio download page



The EEB R Manual is the work of researchers at the University of the Toronto and intended as a purely educational resource. It holds no official association with the R Foundation. It should not be taken as an authority on R best practices.
When using this resource, always default to instructions and guidance provided by your instructor.
This content is reviewed regularly for errors and to make improvements, if you see an error and want to help us make this better, see the Contact Page