Preparation

As noted in the course description, I am not expecting all participants to complete these suggested preparations. However, the more time and effort put into any course, the more you will get out of it. The following suggestions assume that you have a laptop to bring with you to the course.

The most important thing to do in advance is to download the software so that it works on your device. Again, the software that we will use is:

• • Install R, the free statistical software

  • Install RStudio, the free development environment

This is by far the most important piece. Now, we don't really know about the internet connections available on a daily basis. So, being a risk adverse insurance person, I recommend doing the following additional downloads. However, if the connections are at all reasonable, there is should be no barrier to downloading the following on the fly during the course.

R packages

Here is a list of the packages that we will use during the course of the week (there are probably others but this gives us a start). When you install a package, also install their dependencies.

car, psych, Rcmrd, Rmarkdown, VGAM, MASS, actuar, goftest, moments, pander, dplyr, tweedie, numDeriv, statmod, copula

If you install a package at the command line, use the following type of syntax:

> install.packages("car")

The install needs only be done once for a machine. At each session, you can bring the

package into working memory using the command line syntax:

> library(car)

Miscellaneous

In the regression portion, you will find many videos that you will be able to access. Thus, if you have some spare earbuds, these might be useful. With these, you can watch videos without bothering your neighbor....

In other portions of this site, you will find datasets and overheads. Again, if the internet connections are not great, you may want to download these in advance. This is certainly not a necessary step.

Create a free account at Datacamp (To do this, I just give them an email address and password.) We will use this learning platform on the first and third days of the course.