The R Book

Installing R

I assume that you have a PC or an Apple Mac, and that you want to install R on the hard disc. If you have access to the internet then this could hardly be simpler. First go to the site called CRAN (this stands for Comprehensive R Archive Network). You can type its full address,

http://cran.r-project.org/

or simply type CRAN into Google and be transported effortlessly to the site. Once there, you need to ‘Download and Install R’ by running the appropriate precompiled binary distributions. Click to choose between Linux, Mac OS and Windows, then follow the (rather different) instructions. You want the ‘base’ package and you want to run the setup program which will have a name like R*.exe (on a PC) or R*.dmg (on a Mac). When asked, say you want to ‘Run’ the file (rather than ‘Save’ it). Then just sit back and watch. If you do not have access to the internet, then get a friend to download R and copy it onto a CD or a memory stick for you.