Software

You should install and set everything here before the first day of class.

  1. Sign up for Slack. You should have been sent a link to join in the course intro email. If not, email Professor Helveston for an invite link. I recommend using your @gwu.edu email to sign up, but if you use another email for another Slack then use that.

  2. Install the Slack app on your phone and Turn notifications on!. I’ll send all course communication via Slack, so please make sure your notifications are on so you don’t miss anything.

  3. Install the latest version of R and RStudio:

  1. If you have a Mac, install XQuartz. This is needed for making some figures and is only for Mac (if you’re on Windows or Linux, skip this step).

  2. Download and install Quarto

  3. Sign up for Posit Cloud1 (the free version). It’s basically the same thing as RStudio, but accessible via a web browser. If things aren’t working on your computer, this is a great backup to quickly get back to working in RStudio.

  4. You’ll need to install some R packages in RStudio that we will use throughout the semester. To do so, open RStudio then copy-paste this code into the console and press Return. This will install all the packages listed in the file.

That’s it - you’re all set for class!

Footnotes

  1. “Posit” is the company that makes “RStudio”, the software we’ll use to work with R.↩︎