6  Installing the programs

In order to participate in the course, you’ll need to install some programs. You may already have some of them installed. If you do, please make sure that they are at least the minimum versions listed below. If not, you will need to update them.

Note

To those who use other solutions than a laptop: R and RStudio will not work on an iPad or tablet. Please use your laptop for this course.

  1. R: Version 4.6.0 or above. If you have used R before, you can confirm the version by running R.version.string in the Console.
  2. RStudio: Version v2026.08.0 or above. If you have installed it before, check the current version by going to the menu “Help -> About RStudio”.
  3. Rtools: Choose the version that fits your R version (probably the newest and preferably the release version, if possible). Rtools is needed in order to build some R packages. For some computers, installing Rtools can take some time.

  1. R: Any version above 4.6.0. If you have used R before, you can confirm the version by running R.version.string in the Console.

    You can download and install R manually or use Homebrew (if you’re familiar with that already).

  2. RStudio: Version v2026.08.0 or above. If you have installed it before, check the current version by going to the menu “Help -> About RStudio”.

    If you don’t use Homebrew, you can download and install RStudio as you normally would by clicking the link above.

  1. R: Any version above 4.6.0. If you have used R before, you can confirm the version by running R.version.string in the Console.

    Terminal
    sudo apt -y install r-base

  2. RStudio: Any version above v2026.08.0. If you have installed it before, check the current version by going to the menu “Help -> About RStudio”.

  3. r-base-dev: You also need r-base-dev for the {medisr} package.

    Terminal
    sudo apt install r-base-dev
Tip

All these programs are required for the course.

Once R and RStudio have been installed, open RStudio. If you encounter any troubles during these pre-course tasks, try as best as you can to complete the task and then let us know about the issues in the pre-course survey. If you continue having problems, indicate on the survey that you need help you can come to the course 30 minutes earlier to get help.

To see whether everything is set up okay, see this video at YouTube by Prof. Rubak.

Note that it takes 21.25 minutes but is very much work your time! Please make sure to watch the video as we expect you to do all these things in the first session (of course with our support).

If you’re unable to complete the setup procedure due to unfixable technical issues, you can use Posit Cloud (to use RStudio on the cloud) as a final solution in order to participate in the course. For help setting up Posit Cloud for this course, refer to the Posit Cloud setup guide.