This material was adapted from ENV 872 - Environmental Data Analytics and developed by Prof. John Fay.

R

If you already have R installed, please ensure you are using version 4.3.1. If not, follow the instructions below. If you do not have R installed, follow the instructions below.

  1. Open a web browser and naviate to the Duke CRAN mirror: http://archive.linux.duke.edu/cran/
  2. Please select your operating system (Mac, Windows, Linux)

For Windows Users: install the base package

RStudio

If you already have RStudio installed, please ensure you are using version 2023.06.0. To check that you are using the most up-to-date version, go to the Help menu in RStudio and select “Check for Updates.” You will be instructed to install any updates that are available.

If you do not have RStudio installed on your computer, please do the following:

  1. Open a web browser and naviate to http://www.rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/
  2. Select and download the appropriate installer for your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux)
  3. Open the installer and follow the onscreen directions

Git

If you already use Git, please ensure you are using the most up-to-date version. If you do not have Git yet installed, please do the following:

  1. Open a web browser and naviate to https://git-scm.com/download/
  2. Select and download the appropriate installer for your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux)
  3. Open the installer and follow the onscreen directions.

On Windows:

Use all the of the installation defaults except chosing Notepad++ as your default Git editor.

During installation, you will be asked how to configure the line-ending conversions

On Windows: We recommend “Checkout Windows-style, commit Unix-style line endings”

GitHub

  1. Sign up for a GitHub account at https://github.com. Use your Duke email address.
  2. (OPTIONAL) Sign up for a GitHub Student Pack at https://education.github.com/pack if you would like your repositories to be private. The default for repositories is public.
  3. (OPTIONAL) We will be using the https protocol to clone repositories. Another option is to use SSH keys, which is a more secure option. For a guide on how to generate your own SSH key(s), see the guide from the Duke Library: https://git-rfun.library.duke.edu/outline.html.

LaTeX

LaTeX will be used by RStudio and the R package Knitr to convert our RMarkdown files (.Rmd) into professional-quality PDF files. If you do not have LaTeX installed on your computer, please do the following:

On a PC:

  1. Install Basic MiKTeX: http://miktex.org/download.
  2. Note: you need to use the MiKTeX package manager to download required style guides.

By default, RStudio uses style guides to format our PDF documents. These style guides include framed.sty and titling.sty. We have found that not all LaTeX installations include these style guides. If you do not have them, you will get an error message when you “Knit”. To fix this, you need to install the required files.

On a PC: You have two options:

  1. Open the MikTeX package manager from Start.

  2. Search for and install the following: framed, titling

    OR

  3. Type the following in command line (or GitBash): 
    mpm --install framed
mpm --install titling

If your RMarkdown documents are not knitting properly, try the following troubleshooting option: Go to the Start menu, find the menu “MiKTeX Console”, and choose the option Always install missing packages on-the-fly