2.1 Obtaining R

The first step toward successfully using R is to obtain the software. R is freely available and has been precompiled for a variety of platforms.

Go to the R-Project home page. The url is: http://www.r-project.org. From here, you can find a wealth of information on R, including extensive online documentation. Follow the link for CRAN (which stands for “The Comprehensive R Archive Network”). You will be given a list of mirrors from which to choose. I use the Berkeley mirror, but it doesn't really matter which you use - probably one that is geographically close to you is best. Here is the url for the Berkeley mirror: http://cran.cnr.berkeley.edu/. Download the precompiled binary that is appropriate for your operating system and follow the instructions provided.

Aside for Geeks and Geek-Wannabes If you happen to already be an Emacs user, I can't recommend to strongly using ESS (Emacs Speaks Statistics), which allows you to run R through Emacs and thereby capitalize on all its editing, syntax coloration, etc. functionality. For information on using ESS, see http://ess.r-project.org/.

Posted by cengel at August 19, 2005 07:33 AM

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