Downloading and installing MARK
Program MARK is freely available on the Internet. Go here to obtain a free copy, compatible with Windows OS (and to see instructions on how to proceed if you are operating in a Mac or Linux environment). Program MARK must be correctly installed before you can run RMark!
Installing R and R packages (RMark)
Again, first be sure a current version of MARK is installed on your computer. Then, install (in not already installed) the most current version of R from The R Project. Follow the instructions for Getting Started, which will require you to select a CRAN (Comprehensive R Archive Network) site from someplace in the world (closer is generally better) and find the link to download (e.g., "Download R to Windows"). Complete the download and run the installer file.
Once R is successfully installed, you much install the R package RMark. This can be done from within R, in the R console, by clicking 'Packages/Install packages" from the main menu. This will open a drop down menu of CRAN sites and then a menu of packages. Select RMark and click OK.
Alternatively you can run the command
> install.packages("RMark")
from the command line (or via a script file). I have provided an R script file that installs several packages we will need in this course, plus a few additional handy ones, here.
When we start a new R session that will use RMark ordinarily we need to load the packages into memory. We will usually do this by including one of these two command lines early in the code
>library(RMark)
or
>require(RMark) (usually better since it gives a warning and not an error if RMark has not been installed for some reason).
Resources
There are a number of publications and other resources for both MARK and R/ RMark, and online help for both programs. E.g., the command
>?mark
within an RMark session will display html help on different models available and syntax examples for how to build and run models.
In addition, Evan Cooch at Cornell has assembled a very comprehensive ( and growing) online book on MARK: Program MARK - A Gentle Introduction, which covers in detail many of the data structure and models (and some more) we will cover. This book contains a specific chapter (Appendix) on RMark, which is a very useful reference.