course_setup.md

Course instructions

Software and accounts

You will be using the following web services in the course, so please use sign up to them before the course.

1. Open science framework - Web based service for sharing your work. Also provides time stamps and is a preprint server.
2. Github - Web hosting service for Git

Will be using the following software. Please make sure that it's installed on your machine.

1. Git - Version control software
2. R - The R programming language
3. RStudio - Intergrated Development Environment for R

Finally, please make sure that Rstudio can find Git. The instructions here will help you check (and set-up if necessary).

Packages in R

Please install these packages in R before you begin. You can copy and paste the code into the R console and click 'yes' at the pop up window asking to restart R. Please save your work before you do this.

list.of.packages <- c("tidyverse", "data.table", "knitr", "markdown", "rmarkdown")
new.packages <- list.of.packages[!(list.of.packages %in% installed.packages()[,"Package"])]
if(length(new.packages)) install.packages(new.packages)

Tutorials to do before workshop

We expect you to have some fluency in R before the course begins. The following course is a good introduction to R done in RStudio interactively.

swirl

The tl;dr is:

install.packages("swirl")
library(swirl)
# You may be asked to clear your environment at this point - please do that.
swirl()
# Follow instructions and then choose a course.  The recommended ones are:
# 1: R Programming: The basics of programming in R
# 4: Exploratory Data Analysis: The basics of exploring data in R