WinBUGS on the Mac

One of the most influential software packages for MCMC-based Bayesian inference is know as WinBUGS (Where Win corresponds to MS Windows and BUGS stands for Bayesian inference Using Gibbs Sampling). After some internet searching, I found out how to install WinBUGS on the Mac. Because I recently got some questions about this problem, I decided to summarize how I made it work. An excellent tutorial on how to install WinBUGS on a Mac computer is written by Tom Palmer and can be found here. If you plan to use R2WinBUGS later on, you have to install the stable version 1.01 of Darwine, AND install WinBUGS in /applications/WinBUGS14.

R2WinBUGS on the Mac

As an R user, I wanted to find out how I could make WinBUGS run on the Mac, using R (I know this procedure works for R 2.7.1, I am not sure about other versions of R). This can be done with R2WinBUGS. I found the information on Gregor Gorjanc's website very useful.

First, I installed WinBUGS using the above mentioned article, using the stable version 1.01 of Darwine. I couldn't get it to work using another version of Darwine.

Next, I changed some lines in the bugs() call in R:

Psychology.simulation = bugs(data,inits,parameters,model.file,n.chains=1,n.iters=1000, bugs.directory="/Applications/WinBUGS14", WINE="/Applications/Darwine/Wine.bundle/Contents/bin/wine", WINEPATH="/Applications/Darwine/Wine.bundle/Contents/bin/winepath")

R2WinBUGS users probably notice that there are three lines that are different from a "normal" bugs() call:

[1] bugs.directory : This is the directory where you have installed your copy of WinBUGS. I use /Applications/WinBUGS14 because that is where I installed WinBUGS on my computer.

[2] WINE, WINPATH: These are the paths to wine and winepath binaries.