R, RStudio, and Quarto

Carolina Torreblanca

University of Pennsylvania

Global Development: Intermediate Topics in Politics, Policy, and Data

PSCI 3200 - Spring 2026

R and RStudio

Preparedness

You should have…

R + RStudio installed
Quarto doc rendered and sent to CT
GitHub account created and posted to Slack

Motivation: My Story

Unconventional path: 4 years at an NGO in Mexico before the PhD
All I did was data analysis in R — became very proficient
Came to NYU without the typical econ masters background
My peers knew the literature, they knew math proofs — but I knew something they didn’t: how to code
That skill saved me

Motivation: The Market

Data skills remain highly marketable
R is free (Stata: $600+/year) and widely used in policy, research, and industry
Same workflow at World Bank, think tanks, tech companies

On AI and Coding

In the age of GPT and Claude, coding is changing
But the mental structure it gives you — how to think about problems — is worth learning
My two cents: don’t ask AI to do something you couldn’t do yourself
But it’s fine to ask it to do something you could do, just faster or better

Resources

Free, open-source textbook that teaches statistics using R

Statistical Inference via Data Science: A ModernDive into R and the Tidyverse (moderndive.com)
R for Data Science (r4ds.had.co.nz)
JPAL Online Course

Support for R:

ChatGPT (OpenAI), Claude (Anthropic), Gemini (Google)
Stack Overflow

What are R and RStudio?

R is a programming language and free computing environment for statistical computing and graphics
RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) that provides an interface by adding many convenient features and tools
Think of R as a car’s engine and RStudio as the dashboard
RStudio can also be used to manage projects, produce documents, build websites

R is a programming language and free computing environment for statistical computing and graphics. It can be runs on a wide variety of operating systems, including Linux, Windows, and MacOS. RStudio is an integrated development environment (IDE) that provides an interface by adding many convenient features and tools.

You can think of R as a car’s engine and RStudio as the dashboard. In the same way that having access to a speedometer and a navigation system makes driving much easier, using RStudio’s interface makes using R much easier as well.

R and RStudio are entirely free and updated on a regular basis, making them much more accessible and widely used than paid alternatives. You can conduct nearly any analysis using R, ranging from calculating the average of a variable to creating maps and conducting spatial analysis to conducting the analysis for an impact evaluation.

Peronalization

Customize the appearance of your R IDE by going to Tools -> Global Options -> Appearance

Quarto

Quarto integrates code into document production (R, Python, etc.)
Useful for producing professional .pdf or .html files, building websites
All assignments will require building .html files in Quarto
Final project will build a public website presenting an original analysis