R Installation

R
Installation
Author
Affiliation

Johan S. Sáenz

University of Hohenheim

Published

April 30, 2023

What is R?

R is a free programming language and software environment that is broadly use for data wrangling, statistical computing and graphical representation. It can be run on a wide variety of UNIX platforms, Windows and MacOS.

The R project is a collaborative effort between the R developers and its community. Every R user can develop its own packages to run in the R environment and solve different problems or necessities. R is quite powerful but it can be challenging to use. Because of that we used R-studio, which is an integrated development environment (IDE). This IDE includes a console, syntax-highlighting editor that supports direct code execution, and tools for plotting, history, debugging, and workspace management.

Please follow the following guide to install R and R-studio.

Installing R

  1. Go to The R project website and click on download R.

  1. Next, select a repository that is preferably located in the country that you are currently residing.

  1. After, select the the operating system (OS) that you have in your machine. For the following example, I will show the steps for the windows OS, however the instructions for the other OS are quite similar.

  1. Here you can click on “install R for the first time” or “base”.

  1. I usually do not install the last version available, in this case R-4.3.0. I prefer to to install a previous version, which would not have compatibility issues with some of the libraries or packages that I currently use. Go and click on “Previous releases”

  1. Select the version R-4-2.2, which have been stable during the last year. Go ahead and download the .exe file and install it. After, follow the basic installation. I recommend you to install R in English not in German. If you are in a MacOS machine be aware that there are different versions for the intel-based Macs and arm-based macs.

R-studio installation

  1. After a successful R installation, we need to install the RStudio IDE. Go to R-studio website and click on “Donwlad RStudio desktop”. You can download the last version available of RStuio, follow the basic installation. I recommend you to install RStudio in English not in German.

  1. Finally, open RStudio and check in the console that the correct version of R is running under the hood.

Now Enjoy!!!!!!!!! 😀