So that we can jump right into working with data on the first day, we’d like for you to install R and RStudio onto your computer before you arrive. You can install R by going to this website and following the links there, depending on your operating system. If you have a Mac, you will be taken to a new page and about halfway down there will be a download link for a .pkg file. Download that and open that file; this should launch the installer. If you have a Windows machine, you will be taken to a new page and at the top there should be a link to download R 3.6.0 for Windows. Download the executable and run the installer. Once you download R, you can install RStudio by going here and downloading the appropriate installer for your operating system. Be sure to download RStudio Desktop (open source license). Do not download the commercial version and do not download RStudio Server.
During this course, you will be writing code to analyze different data sets as well as generating lots of output. The working directory is the place where R will save any output you generate. For the purpose of this course, you should keep all of your work in one place. So that everyone is on the same page, go to your Desktop and create a new folder called Moneyball.
Now that you’ve installed R and RStudio, why not start playing around with it? We’ve put together a really short problem set that will give you a brief introduction R and contains a few exercises. If you can work your way through Problem Set 0 before you get to camp, great! But don’t worry if you can’t – there will be plenty of time once you get here to go over them with your RTA and project team.