To participate in thisworkshop, you will need access to the software described below.
R is a programming language that is especially powerful for data exploration, visualization, and statistical analysis. To interact with R, we use RStudio.
For this class, please install R Version 3.6.3. You'll notice that this is not the most recent version, but it is more stable than the newer 4.0.
If you use a Mac, this will require at least 10.11 (El Capitan) as your OS. If you use a PC, anything Windows 7 or later will be sufficient.
To download R, go to CRAN (the Comprehensive R Archive Network). Ensure that you download R Version 3.6.3.
To interact with R, we use RStudio. Please install the latest desktop version of RStudio IDE. We will not support RStudio cloud.
You’ll also need to install some R packages. An R package is a collection of functions, data, and documentation that extends the capabilities of base R. Using packages is key to the successful use of R.
Many of the packages that you will learn in this class are part of the so-called tidyverse. The packages in the tidyverse share a common philosophy of data and R programming, and are designed to work together naturally.
To install packages, open RStudio. Go to Tools > Install Packages. Enter the following: tidyverse, knitr, gapminder, rtweet, kableExtra, devtools, tm, wordcloud, matrixStats, SnowballC, tidytext, textdata, stm, readtext
If you have problems installing packages, make sure that you are connected to the internet, and that https://cloud.r-project.org/ isn’t blocked by your firewall or proxy. If RStudio returns an error message, go to "Preferences" and check the "Packages" section. Under "CRAN Mirror," if no mirror is selected, choose "Global (CDN) - RStudio".
In order to knit rmarkdown files to pdf files, you need to install some version of Latex. For students who have not installed LaTeX before, we recommend that you install TinyTeX (https://yihui.name/tinytex/).
Open RStudio and type these lines into the command-line console:
install.packages("tinytex")
tinytex::install_tinytex()
You will need to have a modern web browser installed to perform some of the tasks in this class. The recommended browser for this class is Google Chrome.
As part of the webscraping process, you will need to examine HTML elements in your data. In this class we will be using Selector Gadget for this purpose.
If using Google Chrome, you can simply install the Selector Gadget Chrome extension. If for any reason you can't use Chrome extensions (including on Chrome itself), you can instead install selector gadget by following the instructions on the Selector Gadget website.
Software Carpentry maintains a list of common issues that occur during installation may be useful for our class here: Configuration Problems and Solutions wiki page.
Credit: Thanks to Software Carpentry for providing installation guidelines.