Before we start

This workshop is part of the LAEL Research Bazaar, which is a celebration of the golden jubilee of the Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics and Language Studies (LAEL), at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUCSP), Brazil.

If you arrived at this page before August 7, 2020, you can register for the Zoom synchronous session. If you arrived here at a later date, you can watch the recorded session on facebook.

Installing R and R Studio

If you are running your R code in your computer, you need to install both R and RStudio. Alternatively, you can create a free account at http://rstudio.cloud and run your R code in the cloud. Either way, we will be using the same IDE (i.e., RStudio).

What’s an IDE? IDE stands for integrated development environment, and its goal is to facilitate coding by integrating a text editor, a console and other tools into one window.

I’ve never installed R and RStudio in my computer OR I’m not sure I have R and RStudio installed in my computer

  1. Download and install R from https://cran.r-project.org (If you are a Windows user, first determine if you are running the 32 or the 64 bit version)
  2. Download and install RStudio from https://rstudio.com/products/rstudio/download/#download

I already have R and RStudio installed

  1. Open RStudio
  2. Check your R version by entering sessionInfo() on your console.
  3. The latest release for R was June 22, 2020 (R version 4.0.2 Taking Off Again). If your R version is older than the most recent version, please follow step 1 in the previous section to update R.
  4. Check your RStudio version, if your version is older than Version 1.3.x, please follow step 2 in the previous section to update RStudio.

How often should I update R and RStudio? Always make sure that you have the latest version of R, RStudio, and the packages you’re using in your code to ensure you are not running into bugs that are caused by having older versions installed in your computer.

When asked, Jenny Bryan summarizes the importance of keeping your system up-to-date saying that “You will always eventually have a reason that you must update. So you can either do that very infrequently, suffer with old versions in the middle, and experience great pain at update. Or admit that maintaining your system is a normal ongoing activity, and do it more often.”

You can ensure your packages are also up-to-date by clicking on “Tools” on your RStudio top menu bar, and selecting “Check for Packages Updates…”

A word on IDEs and Installing Packages

What’s an IDE? IDE stands for integrated development environment, and its goal is to facilitate coding by integrating a text editor, a console and other tools into one window.

We are using RStudio as our IDE for this workshop. You can either download and install R and RStudio on your computer (for instructions on how to do so, see the “Before we start” section) or create a free account at http://rstudio.cloud and run your R code in the cloud.

Please ensure you have the lasted version of R and RStudio, otherwise some packages we are using for this workshop will not install correctly.

When you open RStudio, here’s what you see: