
In this section we will provide instructions to downloading R and RStudio. RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) that makes R a bit more user-friendly. In the class associated with this text, RStudio will primarily be used; however, it should be noted other IDEs exist for R. Additionally, R can be used without the aid of an IDE should you decide to do so.

First, to download R, we need to go to the R project website repository as mentioned before. This can be found here. This website has many references relevant to R Users. To download R, go to the CRAN. It is recommended that individuals choose the mirror that is nearest their actual location. (For the purposes of this class, we therefore recommend the Revolution Analytics mirror in Dallas, though really any Mirror will do just fine.) Once here, you will want to click the link that says “Download R” for your relevant operating system (Mac, Windows, or Linux). On the next page, you will click the link that says “install R for the first time.” This will open a page that should look something like this:

Here you will click the “Download R” link at the top of the page. This should download the Installation Wizard for R. Once this has begun, you will click through the Wizard. Unless you have particular advanced preferences, the default settings will work and are preferred.

Once here, you will scroll down until it looks like the screen in 17.2. Then you will want to use the links under the installer subtitle for your relevant operating system. You do not need to use the links under the zip/tarball header. As with R, you should then simply follow the default locations and settings in the Installer of RStudio. As we said before, RStudio simply makes the use of R a little easier and more user-friendly. It includes some of the functionality that often makes other statistical softwares preferred for initially teaching students statistics. Once you have R and RStudio downloaded, you are prepared to dive right in. However, before we do that we want to introduce you to some common terminology in the fields of programming–as well as statistics–that may be helpful in your understanding of R

17.2: Downloading R and RStudio is shared under a CC BY 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Jenkins-Smith et al. via source content that was edited to conform to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform; a detailed edit history is available upon request.