Setup Instructions

Please install the following software prior to arriving at the boot camp.

The Bash Shell

Bash is a commonly-used shell. Using a shell gives you more power to do more tasks more quickly with your computer.

Windows / Git Bash

Install Git Bash following these instructions. This gives you Git as well as Bash.

Mac OS X / Bash

The default shell in all versions of Mac OS X is bash, so no need to install anything. You access bash from the Terminal (found in /Applications/Utilities). You may want to keep Terminal in your dock for this workshop.

Linux / Bash

The default shell is usually bash, but if your machine is set up differently you can run it by opening a terminal and typing bash. There is no need to install anything.

R

R is a programming language that specializes in statistical computing. It is a powerful tool for exploratory data analysis. To interact with R, we will use RStudio, an interactive development environment (IDE).

Windows

Install R by downloading and running this .exe file from The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). Also, please install the RStudio IDE.

Mac OS X

Install R by downloading and running this .pkg file from The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). Also, please install the RStudio IDE.

GNU/Linux

You can download the binary files for your distribution from The Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN). Or you can use your package manager, e.g. for Debian/Ubuntu run apt-get install r-base. Also, please install the RStudio IDE.

Editor

When you're writing code, it's nice to have a text editor that is optimized for writing code, with features like automatic color-coding of key words.

Windows / Editor

Notepad++ is a popular free code editor for Windows.

Mac OS X / Editor

We recommend Text Wrangler or Sublime Text.

Linux / Editor

Nano and Gedit are options for Linux users.

Git

Git is a state-of-the-art version control system. It lets you track who made changes to what when and has options for easily updating a shared or public version of your code on github.com.

Windows / Git Bash

Install Git Bash following the instructions here. This gives you Bash as well as Git.

Mac OS X / Git

Installing Git may require you to first install XCode. This is a very large download (several gigabytes), so please do it before arriving at the bootcamp.

For Mac OS X 10.7 and 10.8:

Go to the Xcode website. Get XCode from the App Store making certain to install the command line tools (from the Download preferences pane). Git is included in the command line tools.

For Mac OS X 10.6

If you have Mac OS X 10.6, first get XCode by going to the Apple developer site. You have to sign in with an Apple ID linked to a Developer account. If you don't have one, you can register and create one. Once you log in, go to page 8 and find "XCode 3.2.6 and iOS SDK 4.3 for Snow Leopard". Click to open that section, and then download the .dmg file. Finally, install just git.

Linux / Git

If Git is not already available on your machine you can try to install it via your distro's package manager (e.g. apt-get).

Installing R packages

Finally, open Rstudio and paste the following commands into your console to install a few packages to use during the workshop.

packages <- c("ggplot2", "plyr", "reshape2", "knitr", "devtools")
install.packages(packages, dependencies = TRUE)