This week’s lab guides you through all the required steps for registering for your course accounts and getting your user environment properly set up for the rest of the semester. This lab is not really a true lab, instead it’s all the preliminary steps you’ll need to follow to get set up for the rest of the semester.
The main tasks you’ll be completing are as follows:
Get an API Key from the US Census Bureau
Register for an “API key” with the Census Bureau here: https://api.census.gov/data/key_signup.html
You should receive an email with your key - it will be a random string of characters. Do not share this with anyone, and do not commit it to GitHub. It can take a few days for them to send you the email.
You will need this key for one of the labs later in the semester.
Account registrations
Create a GitHub account
Step-by-step instructions on how to register for a GitHub account are available here: https://cdsbook.github.io/book/src/book/02_setup.html#step-1-create-a-github-account. Please follow these instructions to create an account using your GMU email.
If you already have a GitHub account, you will need to associate your GMU email with it (assuming it is not already). To do this on GitHub.com, sign in and go to your Email Settings (https://github.com/settings/emails), and add another email.
If you have already created a GitHub account for CDS 101 then you should use that same account in this course and proceed to the next step.
Setting up RStudio
In this course we will be using a programming language called R. We will write all our R code in a code editor called RStudio. You have two options for using RStudio - you can either:
Install RStudio on your own computer (free, but requires some initial set-up on your part).
Use an online version through your web browser (easy, but might cost you $5 per month if you exceed the time limit on a free account).
Note that if you have already installed
The choice of which to use is up to you as they are functionally equivalent. You can also switch between them at any point. For example, you might decide to start with the online version since that is the easiest to get started with.
Option 1: Install RStudio on your own computer
RStudio is available for free, so this option will not cost you anything. However, you will also need to install several other pieces of software to run the course assignments. To do so, follow the instructions in section 2.4.1 of the supplementary notes: https://cdsbook.github.io/book/src/book/02_setup.html#sec-rstudio-desktop-installation
If you already have RStudio installed (e.g. from another class) then you are welcome to use that. However, make sure that you are using R vesion 4.2 or later, and have Git and Latex installed on your computer (see the link above for how to install them).
Option 2: Use the online RStudio
The company behind RStudio provide an online version of the software that you can access at https://posit.cloud.
This is free to use for up to 25 hours per month. After that you will need to upgrade to to the paid tier to continue using the software, which currently costs $5. You can always switch to the free desktop version if you hit this threshold and decide that you don’t want to pay.
To setup an account using the online version of RStudio, follow the instructions in section 2.4.2 of the supplementary course textbook - https://cdsbook.github.io/book/src/book/02_setup.html#option-2-create-an-account-at-posit-cloud
Connect GitHub and RStudio
Finally you will need to create a special password (called a token) so that RStudio can access the code that you have stored at GitHub.
To do that, follow the instructions here: https://cdsbook.github.io/book/src/book/02_setup.html#sec-rstudio-github-connection
If you run into problems, then please talk to your instructor or STAR, or post your issue in the Q&A discussion on Canvas.
Credits
This lab is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Exercises and instructions written by James Glasbrenner and Dominic White for CDS 102.