Computer Hints

Links to Resources

• Statistics Department Research Computing Page: Information about how to use the system, and also about some of the available programs including R and SAS.
• Miscellaneous handouts
  • Unix
    • unix handout (short version)
    • unix handout (longer version)
  • Text editors
    • emacs handout (short version)
    • emacs handout (longer version)
    • vi handout (repulsive text editor)
  • Examples of SAS program files
• Chapters from Jerry's online text: Possibly useful if you are new to all this.
  • Introduction to unix and SAS.
  • Introduction to S and R.
• R
  • Official R website, including how to obtain a free copy of R to put on your home computer.
  • More R Links
  • Introduction to R: A very nice 100-page PDF document. Highly recommended if you are going to be using R for serious work.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader: If you are connecting from a computer not located on campus, you may need to download this free software in order to see the handouts and assignments. It's probably already on your computer, though.

Printing files at home: A convenient way to get a file to your home computer for printing is to email it to yourself. Try
       mail yourname@yourisp.com < fname
where yourname@yourisp.com is your email address and fname is the name of the file, like hw3.lst.

SSH (Secure Shell): With an Internet connection, SSH applications give you a text-only connection to fisher and other unix machines from your home computer. From fisher's unix prompt, you can run programs such as SAS, R, emacs and mathematica. SSH is  secure because what you type and see on your screen is encrypted at one end and decrypted at the other end. This prevents hackers from stealing your password as you log on, and also prevents nosy people from spying on the highly sensitive and confidential work you do in your Statistics courses.

Different SSH programs are recommended, depending on the operating system that you are using. To use these programs, you must be connected to the Internet, say with a broadband connnnection or via PPP over your phone line.

• Linux: SSH is built in. Suppose your login name on fisher is botulism. At the linux prompt, type
             ssh -l botulism fisher.utstat.toronto.edu
  That -l is a lower case L. If your login name on your linux machine is also botulism, you can omit the "-l botulism" part.
• Mac OS X: SSH is built in. Suppose your login name on fisher is botulism. Start up the terminal application on your Mac. At the prompt, type
             ssh -l botulism fisher.utstat.toronto.edu
  That -l is a lower case L. If your login name on your Mac is also botulism, you can omit the "-l botulism" part.
• Mac OS 7, 8 or 9: A number of free SSH programs are available. Mac SSH is nice.
  • Local Download
  • Download from an official site
  To connect, note that the Host Name is fisher.utstat.toronto.edu.
• MS Windows: A number of free SSH programs are available. PuTTY is nice.
  • Local Download
    • Download the bare bones version (all you really need).
    • Download a fuller version: Includes a number of helper programs, including one for sftp (Secure File Transfer Protocol).
  • Download from an official site
  To connect, note that for fisher's IP address (or Host Name), you can put fisher.utstat.toronto.edu.

In any of these SSH programs, the first time you connect to a host, you will be told that the program can't verify that this host is really what it appears to be. Do you want to trust it? SSH is just being sanely paraniod. Say yes.

More Information about PuTTY:

The bare bones PuTTY you can download from this web page is so compact that you can copy it onto a floppy disk and run it directly from from the floppy on just about any PC without installing it. This is handy at Internet Cafés and on friends' computers.

Copy-paste: Suppose you want to transfer fairly small amounts of text between the unix machine and your PC. In a normal Windows application like Explorer or Word, the edit menu has Copy and Paste items -- or you can use control-C and control-V. But PuTTY has no menus, and Control-C and control-V don't do what you might expect, especially if emacs is running. But you can still copy-paste; here's how:

• When you select a block of text in PuTTY, it's automatically copied into a buffer; you don't need to do anything extra to copy it. So to copy from unix to your PC, select in PuTTY, click over on a Word document or whatever, and then choose Paste from the edit menu.
• In PuTTY, you paste by clicking on the right mouse button. So, to get text from Word into emacs, have emacs running in a PuTTY window. In Word, select the text and choose Copy from the edit menu. Click on the PuTTY window (left click). Then  right click, and the text will be pasted in.