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Tutorials for Analyzing US Census Data: Methods, Maps, and Models in R

About this package

tidycensus.tutorials provides tutorials for Analyzing US Census Data: Methods, Maps, and Models in R by Kyle Walker. These tutorials assume that you have some experience working with the tools provided by the tutorial.helpers package. As long as you have completed the “Getting Started” tutorial from that package, you should be fine.

Installation

You can install the development version from GitHub with:

remotes::install_github("PPBDS/tidycensus.tutorials")

If R offers you the option to update some packages, you should do so. For packages that need compilation, feel free to answer “no”.

Then restart your R session or restart RStudio.

Accessing tutorials

In order to access the tutorials, start by loading the package.

You can access the tutorials via the Tutorial tab in the top right (Environment) pane in RStudio.

If either of the following is happening to you

  • Cannot find the Tutorial pane
  • Cannot find any tidycensus.tutorials

Try to restart your R session after installing the package.

Because tutorials within the Tutorial pane are sorted in alphabetical order by the name of the package, the tidycensus.tutorials will be toward the bottom. If you don’t see any tutorials, try clicking the “Home” button – the little house symbol with the thin red roof in the upper right.

In order to expand the window, you can drag and enlarge the tutorial pane inside RStudio. In order to open a pop-up window, click the “Show in New Window” icon next to the home icon.

You may notice that the Jobs tab in the lower left will create output as the tutorial is starting up. This is because RStudio is running the code to create the tutorial. If you accidentally clicked “Start Tutorial” and would like to stop the job from running, you can click the back arrow in the Jobs tab, and then press the red stop sign icon. Your work will be saved between RStudio sessions, meaning that you can complete a tutorial in multiple sittings. Once you have completed a tutorial, follow the instructions on the tutorial Submit page and, if you’re a student, submit your answers as instructed.