R and RStudio Setup

File Organization

Required: Change the default file download location for your internet browser.

  • Generally by default, internet browsers automatically save all files to the Downloads folder on your computer. This does not encourage good file organization practices. You need to change this option so that your browser asks you where to save each file before downloading it.
  • This page has information on how to do this for the most common browsers.

Required: Create a folder for this course on your local harddrive (e.g. Desktop or Documents), not necessarily on a Cloud Drive as you may encounter large datasets in this class.

R & RStudio

Follow these instructions to set up the software that we’ll be using throughout the semester.

Even if you’ve already downloaded both R and RStudio, you need to re-download to make sure that you have the most current versions.

Required: Download R and RStudio

  • FIRST: Download R here.
    • You will see three links “Download R for …”
    • Choose the link that corresponds to your computer operating system (and pay attention to processor chip type for Mac - M1/M2 or Intel; On your computer, click Apple > About this Mac and find info about the Chip).
    • As of Jan 20, 2025, the latest version of R is 4.4.2
  • SECOND: Download RStudio here.
    • Click the button under step 2 to install the version of RStudio recommended for your computer.
    • As of Jan 20, 2025, the latest version of RStudio is 2024.12.0-467.
  • THIRD: Check that when you go to File > New Project > New Directory, you see “Quarto Website” as an option. If you don’t have this option, you haven’t updated RStudio to a recent enough option.


Highly Recommended: Watch this video made by Dr. Lisa Lendway that describes essential configuration options for RStudio.


Required: Install the most up-to-date versions of the required R packages for this course.

  • An R package is an extra bit of functionality that will help us in our data analysis efforts in a variety of ways.
  • Open RStudio and click inside the Console pane (by default, the bottom left pane). Copy and paste the following command into the Console. You should see the text below appear to the right of the >, which is called the R prompt. After you paste, hit Enter.
install.packages(c("tidyverse","tidymodels","GGally","ISLR"), dependencies = TRUE)
  • If you get a message that says “There are binary versions available the source versions are later”” type no and press Enter.
  • You will see a lot of text from status messages appearing in the Console as the packages are being installed. Wait until you see the > again.
  • Enter the command library(ggplot2) and hit enter.
    If you see the message Error in library(ggplot2) : there is no package called ggplot2, then there was a problem installing this package. Jump down to the Troubleshooting section below. (Any other messages that appear are fine, and a lack of any messages is also fine.)
  • Repeat the above step for the commands:
    • library(tidyverse)
    • library(tidymodels)
    • library(GGally)
    • library(ISLR)
  • Quit RStudio. You’re done setting up!

Optional: For a refresher on RStudio features, watch this video. It also shows you how to customize the layout and color scheme of RStudio.



Required: Set essential RStudio options.

Go to:

  • Windows: Edit > Preferences > General
  • Mac: Tools > Global Options… > General

Navigate to the “Workspace” section.

  • Restore .RData into workspace at startup: Leave this unchecked
  • Save workspace to .RData on exit: Select “Never”
  • Press “Apply” and then “OK”





If you don’t change these options, RStudio will save all of the objects you ever create in your Global Environment. In practice, this leads to all of the objects, datasets, etc that you have ever worked with at Macalester being loaded in when you start RStudio.

  • This can make startup slow.
  • It clutters the Global Environment. (e.g., You’re working on something and referring to diamonds not knowing that a diamonds that was used in class last year is already in the Global Environment.)

Troubleshooting

  • Problem: You are on a Mac and getting the following error (or something similar):
    Error: package or namespace load failed for ‘ggplot2’ in loadNamespace(i, c(lib.loc, .libPaths()), versionCheck = vI[[i]]):
     there is no package called ‘rlang’

Here’s how to fix it:

  • First install the suite of Command Line Tools for Mac using the instructions here.
  • Next enter install.packages("rlang") in the Console.
  • Finally check that entering library(ggplot2) gives no errors.