Baltimore Data Day 2024

This activity is meant to guide you through some R fundamentals so you can get started on your data journey!

Installing R and RStudio

You will need to install R. RStudio is a development environment for running R. It comes with a lot of cool features.

• Download and Install R.
• Downlaod and Install RStudio.

If you work on a Windows machine, you might also need to install R Tools.

Navigate RStudio

Locate the following in RStudio:

• Console. This is where code is run.
• Environment. This shows you objects R can work with.

Read more about the RStudio user interface here.

Organize your files

We will create an “R Project” to stay organized. You can create many more later.

• Go to File > New Project…
• Select “New Directory”.
• Select “New Project”.
• Provide a Directory name, such as “Intro to R”.
• Pick a reasonable location, such as your Documents folder.

Intro to R Activity

Now we will transition to the activities, which are actually in the code files!

• Download This file.
• Download This BNIA data about library cards. (source)
• Move the downloaded files to the directory you created above.
• Open BDD.Rmd in RStudio (File > Open File or simply double-click).

Tidycensus Activity

• Download This file.
• Move the downloaded files to the directory you created above.
• Open start_using_tidycensus.Rmd in RStudio (File > Open File or simply double-click).
• You will need a free Census API key, this lets your computer communicate with Census. A key can be obtained from http://api.census.gov/data/key_signup.html.