1.1 Software employed

The software we will employ in this course is available in all UC3M computer labs. We will use two pieces of software:

R. A free open-source software environment for statistical computing and graphics. Virtually all the statistical methods you can think of are available in R. Currently, it is the dominant statistical software (at least among statisticians).
R Commander. A Graphical User Interface (GUI) designed to make R accessible to non-specialists through friendly menus. Essentially, it translates simple menu instructions into R code.

The only thing you need to do to run R Commander in any UC3M computer is:

Run 'Start' -> 'R3.3.1' -> 'R3.3.1 (consola)'. A black console will open. Do not panic!
Type inside
```
library(Rcmdr)
```
Congratulations on your first piece of R code, you have just loaded a package!
If Rcmdr is installed, then R Commander will open automatically and you are ready to go. In case you accidentally close R Commander, type
```
Commander()
```
If Rcmdr is not installed, then type
```
install.packages("Rcmdr", dep = TRUE)
```
and say 'Yes' to the next pop-ups regarding the installation of the personal library. This will download and install Rcmdr and all the related packages from a CRAN mirror ('Spain (A Coruña) [https]', usually works fine – try a different one if you experience problems). Wait for the downloading and installation of the packages. When it is done, just type
```
library(Rcmdr)
```
and you are ready to go.

An important warning about UC3M computer labs:

Every file you save locally (including installed packages) will be wiped out after you close your session. So be sure to save your valuable files at the end of the lesson.

The exception is the folder ‘C:/TEMP’, where all the files you save will be accessible for everyone that logs in the computer!

In UC3M computers, R and R Commander are only available in Spanish. To have them in English, you need to do a workaround:

Create a shortcut to R in your desktop. To do so, go to 'C:/Archivos de programa/R/R-3.3.1/bin/', right-click in‘R.exe’and choose‘Enviar a’ -> ‘Escritorio (crear acceso directo)’`.
Modify the properties of the shortcut. Right-click on the shortcut and choose 'Propiedades'. Then append to the 'Destino' field the text Language=en (separated by a space, see Figure 1.1). Click 'Aplicar' and then 'OK'.
Run that shortcut and then type library(Rcmdr).

Tip: if you save the modified shortcut in 'C:/TEMP', it could be available the next time you log in.

Alternatively, you can bring your own laptop and save all your files in it, see Section 1.3.