Installing R Packages

Now that you have successfully installed R, you have access to many functions in the R "base" package. But we'll want to add packages that will give us additional functions helpful for the class. I'll illustrate adding the package "aplpack" that we'll need to get the "stem.leaf" function. Also, I'll show you how to add the "LearnEDA" package that I wrote for the class.

Installing the package aplpack from CRAN.

1. In R, choose the menu item Packages -> Install Packages.

2. You'll be asked to choose a CRAN mirror site -- choose one in the United States.

3. Then you'll see a list of all available Packages -- choose aplpack.

4. At this point, the package will be downloaded and installed -- if you see the message

package 'aplpack' successfully unpacked and MD5 sums checked

you're in good shape.

5. The package aplpack is installed but not yet loaded into R. To load the package, you type

library(aplpack)

6. To check to see if you have the aplpack commands, try constructing a stemplot on a random sample of values from a standard normal distribution:

stem.leaf(rnorm(50))

If you get some display, you're set.

Installing the class package LearnEDA.

This is a package that I wrote that has some special functions and all the datasets we'll use. This is not available on CRAN yet, since it is still in development. But it is available from my website.

1. Go to the class web folder http://bayes.bgsu.edu/EDA/ and find the zip file

LearnEDA_1.0.zip

Download this file to the Windows desktop (or some other convenient place).

2. To install this package, select Packages -> Install Package(s) from local zip files

3. Select the LearnEDA_1.0.zip file. In a short time, R will install this package.

4. To see if you have successfully loaded this package, load in the package and check to see if you can read in one of the class datasets.

library(LearnEDA)
data(football)
football

If you see a lot of football scores, then you have succeeded in loading this package.