00. Getting started

There are a few things you need to do to get started in this course.

wordpress_logo1. WordPress

Go to https://sites.umassd.edu and set up a free WordPress blog for MTH 332, entitled:

YourNameMTH332.sites.umassd.edu

where, of course, “YourName” is … your name.

Email me the URL – which should be “YourName”MTH332.sites.umassd.edu

This blog is where you will post the work you do on projects throughout the semester.

You can access this blog anywhere you have access to a networked computer (or via your phone).

Here’s how to set up your WordPress site:

Your work journal should be set up as a WordPress site at

sites.umassd.edu and your URL should be of the form

YourNamemth332.sites.umassd.edu

where, of course “YourName” is your name.

You will write your weekly work journal entries as posts (and not as pages).

Below we detail how to setup, navigate and write posts in a WordPress website.

 1. Go to sites.umassd.edu and click on “Create a site”.

2. You will be asked to log in. Use your UMass Dartmouth email to log in.

3. When you are logged in and have clicked “Create a site” you will be taken to a page where you will see “Site Domain (subdomain only):”

3(a) In the space provided enter “YourNamemth332”, where – of course – “YourName” is your name. Your site’s URL will then be “YourNamemth332.sites.umassd.edu”

3(b) In the space below “Site Title:” enter a title for your site. This can be anything (but must be something!) – for example “YourName’s Statistics Site”.

3(c) Click on “Create Site” to create your WordPress site.

4. You will be asked again to log in. After logging in you will see a live WordPress page. To the top right you will se a “Howdy, YourName”. To the top left you will see “My Sites” – put your cursor on “My Sites” (but do not click). You will see your site name – run your curser down on it and a little popup will appear with “Dashboard”. Click on “Dashboard”.

5. When you see your WordPress dashboard run your cursor down to “Appearance” and choose “Themes”. You will see a variety of themes for your site that you can preview and then activate. 

6. Go back to “Dashboard” and run your cursor to “Pages”. Click “All pages”. You will see a “Sample page”. Click on it, remove all the text, and change the title from “Sample page” to “Home”. Click on “Update” in the blue box, down to the right.

7. On the Dashboard, run your cursor down to “Settings” and choose “Reading”. Activate the following: 

and click “Save changes” in the blue box down to the left.

8. On Dashboard -> Posts ->All posts you will see a post “Hello World”.  Edit it – change the title and the text however you want, and Update the post.

9. Go to your Website URL to see your latest post.

10. To add a new post, go to Posts -> Add New Post, give your post a title and add text. Save your post using Update.

11. To post a PDF, or to insert a PDF into a post, first upload the PDF by going to Media -> Add New Media File. In your new post, click on “Add Media” toward the top right and choose ypour PDF from the media file. Update to save your post with an embedded PDF.

2. Software

Please choose the software that works best for you, bearing in mind the instructor can help you with issues with R and Mathematica, but not with Python or other possible software choices.

  1. The most commonly used software for statical analysis is R, which is described below.
  2. Mathematica has very powerful statistical functions and provides a unified and attractive integrated development environment in which to cary out analyses.
  3. Python has many statistical functions, and some students prefer to use this instead of R.

R & RStudio

Mathematica

Mathematica is freely available to you as a U Mass Dartmouth student, under license from Wolfram Inc.

Statistical Data Analysis in Mathematica

 3. Creating PDFs

RMarkdown

  • RMarkdown is a convenient way to produce formatted PDF documents, with your R code and graphics embedded, from within R Studio. Note, however, that PDF output from R Markdown requires a full installation of TeX on your machine (the machines in LArts 218 have a TeX installation). If you intend to produce PDFs directly from RStudio using RMarkdown you will, therefore, need to install a version of TEX on your machine.
  • There is a free and full introduction to using RMarkdown online: Introductory R Markdown: dynamic documents and reproducible research for beginners.
  • Here is:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-apyD5f9nwg]

LaTeX

  • An alternative, somewhat less convenient (but more powerful),  to using RMarkdown is to write your LaTeX in the freely available online LaTex editor and production system Overleaf, copy, paste and format your R code into Overleaf, along with importing graphics from RStudio into Overleaf.

Mathematica

  • If you are using Mathematica to do statistical analysis you can simply save your Mathematica notebook as a PDF.