R and R Studio Resources

Getting Help

  • Crowd-sourced R functions

  • Interactive RStudio tutorials on various topics, including R basics and visualizing data

  • Markdown (Quarto) basics, and tutorial

  • RStudio cheatsheets

  • Google! If you have a question about R, you can be fairly certain that someone else has already asked it. Google is your best friend for answering questions about R. I recommend adding “R tidyverse” to the search term. For example, to find out how to make a scatterplot, try searching “scatterplot R tidyverse”.

  • I would strongly suggest against using ChatGPT to help with code, at least as a first resort. It tends to give needlessly wordy solutions to things, and ultimately, I want you to understand what your code is telling you. It will likely give you code that we have never used before in class, and ultimately will not support your learning and understanding of R as a language.

Getting Started

The videos linked below provide a brief introduction to R and RStudio, as well as instructions on how to download these tools to your personal computer. You should start with the overview, and then watch the step-by-step instructions for your operating system (Mac or Windows). Here are the links mentioned in the videos:

Important Note: the version numbers in the videos are out-of-date. Please make sure you download the latest versions of both R and RStudio. (If you’ve already used R/RStudio in past courses, you’ll need to download it again to make sure you have the same version as the rest of the class.) As of January 6, 2025, the latest version of R is 4.4.2 and the latest version of RStudio is 2024.12.0+467.

Pick one of the following:

If you run into any issues with installation, please get in touch with me as soon as possible! If we can’t get RStudio to install correctly on your computer, then I’ll have you use Macalester’s online RStudio server instead. Watch this video for a quick introduction to the server.

Once you’ve downloaded R and RStudio, watch the following videos to introduce you to the basics of R. You should watch them in the order listed below. Note that you can change the speed of the video (faster or slower) and pause as needed.

  1. Intro to R and RStudio (Length = 11:31)

  2. R Data Types (Length = 8:05)

  3. R Error Messages and Troubleshooting (Optional) (Length = 7:52)

  4. Intro to RMarkdown (Length = 9:33)

  5. File Structure and Organization: Mac version, Windows version (Optional) (Length = 5:13, 7:44)

  6. Some useful tips on File Naming and Organization (Optional)

  7. R Packages (Optional) (Length = 7:30)