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Software Installation

You will need to install the necessary software on to your laptop or personal computer to bring to work through the coding portions of this class.

Thanks Tilburg Science Hub!

These installation instructions have been made simpler by borrowing from Tilburg Science Hub. Check out their website for a tonne of cool stuff!

R and R Studio

Throughout the course, we'll use R - a comprehensive toolbox to handle and analyze large data sets. The best thing about R is that it’s open source. It's freely usable by anyone. Plus there's a vibrant community that keeps on developing R. Or extend it with your own packages.

Some OS specific extras:

  • Mac Users
    • Non M1 (older): Install the Rtoolchain. This will automatically take care of several steps like installing Xcode, etc.
    • M1 (newer): While the new M1 chips offer incredible performance, unfortunately they require several finicky steps to play nicely with some of the other tools that we might adopt. Please install Xcode by opening your Terminal and running xcode-select --install.
  • Windows Users

Throughout the course we'll need to install R packages to get some extra functionality. We'll provide starter code for most instances, which will show you what needs installing. Look at the starter code before coming to Computer Lectures to make sure you have everything installed if you want to follow along.

Git and GitHub

Git and GitHub are tools that allow you to "version" files - think of it as a combination of Dropbox (with unlimited & free rollbacks to previous file versions) and messaging client (to discuss projects with team members).

Please install Git, by following these setup instructions.