Setup for R workshop

Last updated on 2025-01-07 | Edit this page

Overview

This workshop is designed to be run on your laptop. First, you will need to download the data we use in the workshop. Then, you need to install some software. After following the instructions on this page, you should have everything you need to participate fully in the workshop!

Data

You can download all of the data used in this workshop as a single zip file. The file is 206 KB.

Clicking the download link will automatically download all of the files to your default download directory as a single compressed (.zip) file. To expand this file, double click the folder icon in your file navigator application (for Macs, this is the Finder application).

For a full description of the data used in this workshop see the data page.

Software

Software Install Manual Available for Description
Spreadsheet program Download LibreOffice LibreOffice documentation Linux, MacOS, Windows Spreadsheet program for organizing tabular data.
OpenRefine Download OpenRefine OpenRefine documentation Linux, MacOS, Windows
R See install instructions below. Linux, MacOS, Windows
RStudio Download RStudio RStudio Cheatsheet Linux, MacOS, Windows
DB Browser for SQLite Download DB Browser for SQLite Linux, MacOS, Windows

Spreadsheet program

  • To interact with spreadsheets, we can use LibreOffice, Microsoft Excel, Gnumeric, OpenOffice.org, or other programs. Commands may differ a bit between programs, but the general ideas for thinking about spreadsheets are the same. For this workshop, we recommend using either Microsoft Excel (paid software) or LibreOffice (free and open source). Other spreadsheet programs may not have all of the features we will be exploring in this workshop.

  • To install LibreOffice, first download LibreOffice. The website should automatically select the correct option for your operating system. Click the “Download” button. You will go to a page that asks about a donation, but you don’t need to make one. Your download should begin automatically. Once the installer is downloaded, double click on it (you may need to open your Downloads folder) and LibreOffice should install.

OpenRefine

OpenRefine can be downloaded from the OpenRefine downloads page. When you download the version for your operating system, you are redirected to a page with initial instructions for running the software.

More detailed instructions are included in the Setup section in the OpenRefine for Social Science Data.

R and RStudio

  • R and RStudio are separate downloads and installations. R is the underlying statistical computing environment, but using R alone is no fun. RStudio is a graphical integrated development environment (IDE) that makes using R much easier and more interactive. You need to install R before you install RStudio. After installing both programs, you will need to install some specific R packages within RStudio. Follow the instructions below for your operating system, and then follow the instructions to install tidyverse and RSQLite.

Windows

  • Open RStudio, and click on “Help” > “Check for updates”. If a new version is available, quit RStudio, and download the latest version for RStudio.
  • To check which version of R you are using, start RStudio and the first thing that appears in the console indicates the version of R you are running. Alternatively, you can type sessionInfo(), which will also display which version of R you are running. Go on the CRAN website and check whether a more recent version is available. If so, please download and install it.

You can uninstall older versions of R if you wish to do so.

  • Download R from the CRAN website.
  • Run the .exe file that was just downloaded
  • Go to the RStudio download page
  • Under Installers select RStudio x.yy.zzz - Windows Vista/7/8/10 (where x, y, and z represent version numbers)
  • Double click the file to install it
  • Once it’s installed, open RStudio to make sure it works and you don’t get any error messages.

macOS

  • Open RStudio, and click on “Help” > “Check for updates”. If a new version is available, quit RStudio, and download the latest version for RStudio.
    • To check the version of R you are using, start RStudio and the first thing that appears on the terminal indicates the version of R you are running. Alternatively, you can type sessionInfo(), which will also display which version of R you are running. Go on the CRAN website and check whether a more recent version is available. If so, please download and install it. In any case, make sure you have at least R 3.2.
  • 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)
  • Go to the RStudio download page
  • Under Installers select RStudio x.yy.zzz - Mac OS X 10.6+ (64-bit) (where x, y, and z represent version numbers)
  • 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 sudo 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 3.2.

  • Go to the RStudio download page

  • Under Installers select the version that matches your distribution, and install it with your preferred method (e.g., with Debian/Ubuntu sudo dpkg -i rstudio-x.yy.zzz-amd64.deb at the terminal).

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

  • After installing R and RStudio, you need to install the tidyverse and RSQLite packages. Start RStudio by double-clicking the icon and then type: install.packages(c("tidyverse", "RSQLite")). You can also do this by going to Tools -> Install Packages and typing the names of the packages you want to install, separated by a comma.

SQL

  • SQL is a specialized programming language used with databases. We use a simple database manager called SQLite in our lessons. We will use the DB Browser for SQLite program, which is available for all major platforms.

  • To install the DB Browser, first download DB Browser for SQLite and choose the correct installer for your operating system. Once the installer is downloaded, double click on it (you may need to open your Downloads folder), follow any other instructions that appear, and DB Browser should install. After installing, you can delete the installer file.

Congratulations! You are now ready for the workshop!