Summary and Setup

This is a lesson about how to use the targets R package for maintaining efficient data analysis workflows.

Prerequisite

Prerequisites

This lesson assumes some familiarity with the R programming language, such as that covered in R for Reproducible Scientific Analysis.

Follow these instructions to install the required software on your computer.

• Download and install the latest version of R. This lesson requires R version 4.5.0 or later, because the penguins data we use is included in base R starting with that version.
• Download and install RStudio. RStudio is an application (an integrated development environment or IDE) that facilitates the use of R and offers a number of nice additional features, including the Quarto publishing system. You will need the free Desktop version for your computer.
• Install the necessary R packages with the following command:

R

install.packages(
  c(
    "crew",
    "quarto",
    "tarchetypes",
    "targets",
    "tidyverse",
    "visNetwork"
  )
)