Summary and Setup

In this course we will look at how to visualise data using the ggplot2 package in R.

We will cover the basics, and look at a selection of common graphs, how to manipulate axes, scales and colours.

Discussion

This is not an introduction to R

In this course we assume you have the knowledge equivalent to attending one of our introductory courses

  • Have R and Positron installed
    • Alternatively run everything on posit.cloud
  • Know how to assign values to variables
  • Know what a function is, and how we pass input and parameters to it
  • Be familiar with the |> operator
  • Know the basic verbs from dplyr of the tidyverse:
    • select
    • filter
    • mutate
    • arrange
    • summarise
  • Be familiar with dataframes
  • Know how to install and load packages
  • Know how to comment your code
  • Know how to do math on variables
  • Get the concept of vectors
  • Subsetting vectors and dataframes
    • Using logical tests
  • Use NA to encode missing values
  • Read in data from a csv/excel

We have updated the look of this course. If you need to access the old version, you can find it following this link.

Software Setup

Callout

Warning

Please do NOT install R, Positron and RStudio on Onedrive or other cloud drives. R will work but you will not be able to install the extensions to R needed in this course!

Discussion

Installing R and Positron

R and Positron are separate downloads and installations. R is the underlying statistical computing environment, but using R alone is no fun. Positron is a graphical Integrated Development Environment (IDE) that makes using R much easier and more interactive. You need to install R before you install Positron. Once installed, because Positron is an IDE, Positron will run R in the background. You do not need to run R separately.

In the course we will be using Positron. If you are already using RStudio and would prefer to keep doing so, that is not a problem.

Please note that the short cut (ctrl + shift + m) in Positron will give you the base-R pipe (|>), whereas in RStudio the same short cut will give you the magrittr pipe (%>%). They work the same way.

Rather than installing R and Positron on your personal computer, Posit Cloud offers a free, online alternative, where you will be able to run R and RStudio in your browser. Sign up with your email address.

The free version of RStudio Cloud places limitations on the number of projects you can work on, and the amount of memory and processing power you can access. For the purposes of following these lessons, RStudio Cloud is perfectly adequate, and what we recommend if you have any problems installing R and Positron on your personal computer.

If you already have R and RStudio installed

In the course we will be using Positron. If you prefer to continue using RStudio, that is not a problem, but please do the following:

  • Open RStudio, and click on “Help” > “Check for updates”. If a new version is available, quit RStudio, and download the latest version of RStudio.
  • To check which version of R you are using, start RStudio and the first thing that appears in the console indicates the version of R you are running. Alternatively, you can type sessionInfo(), which will also display which version of R you are running. Go to the CRAN website and check if a more recent version is available. If so, please download and install it. You can check here for more information on how to remove old versions from your system if you wish to do so.
  • In any case, make sure you have at least R 4.5 installed.

If you already have R and Positron installed

  • Open Positron, and click on the “cogwheel” (lower left corner) > “Check for updates”. If a new version is available, it will be installed in the background.
  • To check which version of R you are using, start Positron and the first thing that appears in the console indicates the version of R you are running. Alternatively, you can type sessionInfo(), which will also display which version of R you are running. Go to the CRAN website and check if a more recent version is available. If so, please download and install it. You can check here for more information on how to remove old versions from your system if you wish to do so.
  • In any case, make sure you have at least R 4.5 installed.

If you don’t have R and Positron installed

  • Download R from the CRAN website.
  • Run the .exe file that was just downloaded.
  • Go to the Positron download page.
  • First accept the user agreement
  • Choose the windows user level install option.
  • Double click the file to install it.
  • Once it’s installed, open Positron to make sure it works and you don’t get any error messages.

If you already have R and RStudio installed

In the course we will be using Positron. If you prefer to continue using RStudio, that is not a problem, but please do the following.

  • Open RStudio, and click on “Help” > “Check for updates”. If a new version is available, quit RStudio, and download the latest version for RStudio.
  • To check the version of R you are using, start RStudio and the first thing that appears on the terminal indicates the version of R you are running. Alternatively, you can type sessionInfo(), which will also display which version of R you are running. Go to the CRAN website and check if a more recent version is available. If so, please download and install it.
  • In any case, make sure you have at least R 4.5 installed.

If you already have R and Positron installed

  • Open Positron, and click on the “cogwheel” (lower left corner) > “Check for updates”. If a new version is available, it will be installed in the backgound.
  • To check the version of R you are using, start RStudio and the first thing that appears on the terminal indicates the version of R you are running. Alternatively, you can type sessionInfo(), which will also display which version of R you are running. Go to the CRAN website and check if a more recent version is available. If so, please download and install it.
  • In any case, make sure you have at least R 4.5 installed.

If you don’t have R and Positron installed

  • Download R from the CRAN website.
  • Select the .pkg file for the latest R version.
  • Double click on the downloaded file to install R.
  • It is also a good idea to install XQuartz (needed by some packages).
  • Go to the Positron download page.
  • First accept the user agreement
  • Choose the version appropriate for your version of Mac.
  • Double click the file to install it.
  • Once it’s installed, open Positron to make sure it works and you don’t get any error messages.
  • Follow the instructions for your distribution from CRAN, they provide information to get the most recent version of R for common distributions. For most distributions, you could use your package manager (e.g., for Debian/Ubuntu run sudo apt-get install r-base, and for Fedora sudo yum install R), but we don’t recommend this approach as the versions provided by this approach are usually out of date.
  • In any case, make sure you have at least R 4.5.
  • Go to the Positron download page.
  • First accept the user agreement
  • Choose the version appropriate for your distribution, and install it with your preferred method (e.g., with Debian/Ubuntu sudo dpkg -i Positron-2025.12.0-167-x64.deb at the terminal).
  • Once it’s installed, open Positron to make sure it works and you don’t get any error messages.