RStudio is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) for R and it helps you:

• write code - makes suggestions
• view the output of your code, including plots
• find errors
• manage files
• view documentation

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RStudio used to be the name of a company that is now called Posit.

First it is important to be familiar with the layout. When you first open RStudio, you will see 3 panes.

To save a copy of your code. You must open a file first - this will open a 4th pane. These files include Scripts or what are called R Markdown files.

You will see a popup that you can just say “OK” to for now.

Nice! now we have a place to save code! This is where we will mostly be working.

1. The Source/Editor:

   • Top by default
   • saves your code

2. The R Console:

   • Bottom by default
   • Calculator
   • Place to try things out, then add to your editor
   • doesn’t save your code

Super useful “cheatsheet”: LINK

It will look like this with text in it.

Although people will use scripts often, and they are good for more programmatic purposes, we generally don’t recommend them for Public Health Researchers.

For data analyses, R Markdown files are generally superior because they allow you to check your code and write more info about your code.