Chapter 1 Installing the Data Science Toolchain

This chapter introduces the components of what may be referred to as the R ‘toolchain’ for data science and illustrates several benefits of using this toolchain. The term toolchain refers to way that, once installed and configured, these components provide a seamless experience for analyzing data, creating documents and presentations, developing interactive applications and dashboards, and collaborating with colleagues. Each of the components in this toolchain are free, open-source, and have been approved for use on many commercial and government computers. The toolchain components are:

• The R Project for Statistical Computing

• The RStudio IDE

• \(\LaTeX\)

• R Tools (for Windows machines)

• Git/GitHub

The following sections present steps for installing each of component along with instructions on how to link the components to form the integrated toolchain. Configuration tests are also provided to help avoid common set-up errors and demonstrate several benefits of the toolchain. Note, these instructions are applicable for use on personal computers (Windows & Mac) and many government computers. If any errors are observed, please open an issue on this repo’s public Github Page.