This is a second in a series of posts about the program R. In my last post (see:R is a Language and Environment for Statistical Computing and Graphics) , I explained what R was. For those who are interested in starting a project in R, the steps to download a copy of your own are quick and easy:
Simply go to www.r-project.org.
To download R, click on the link labeled CRAN on the left side, under the words “Download, Packages”.
The Comprehensive R Archive Network is available at many different URLs, and they give you the option to download from the mirror location closest to you. For example, my closest location was Carnegie Mellon University’s URL in PA.
On the next page, you will be given a choice to download for Linux, Windows or Mac.
Each choice has different links to click to download, which should be straightforward. I will continue this with an example of how to download on a Mac.
The first choice you must make is to determine what operating system your computer is running.
After installation, call up the package you downloaded, and begin the installer.
Once it is completed, you can find R in your applications and boot it up. At first, you may be prompted to determine a directory to call from each time you would like to create a program, but every consequent time it should be automatically selected
If anyone is interested in using a more enhanced version of R, Revolution Analytics has their own version called Revolution R Open, which can be downloaded from their site at http://mran.revolutionanalytics.com/download/#download. Clicking on the link desired from that page will download a package of their program, starting another installation process.
Revolution Analytics is the “leading commercial provider of software and services based on the open source R project for statistical computing” according to their site. As this R series progresses, we will touch up on Revolution Analytics more as well.