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Announcements

Important announcements will be posted here to avoid our inboxes getting clogged up.

If you have questions - direct them to us via Slack. There's a 'Direct Message' feature so you can contact us individually as needed, but where possible post messages to a channel that all participants can see.

Example Final Assignment

Date Posted: 2019-01-24

Lachlan has constructed an example final assignment.

It uses only R packages that were taught in the course, or available in the additional material and a simplified Snakemake set up (particularly for the pdf generation).

You can check it out here

Final Assignment

Date Posted: 2019-02-21

Detail about the course assignment:

  • Due date: Saturday, March 16 at 23:59.
  • Discuss with one of us your proposed assignment before you start
    • We can evaluate whether it is do-able within the time frame
    • Don't try and be too fancy, it's more important that it works
  • The assignment must:
    • Produce at least one figure and one table of results that are saved to file
    • Do some form of data cleaning / manipulation as part of the workflow
      • The initial "dataset" cannot be the one that generates the regression / figures
    • Use Snakemake to execute the workflow
  • Submission format: Invite @lachlandeer to collaborate on your GitHub repository by the due date. He will potentially allocate another instructor to assess your work.
    • This means, we expect well version controlled work.
    • Tag your final submission using the following git command git tag -a v1.0 -m "submitted version"
    • You must have a README.md in the main directory with instructions on how we can build the assignment & what it does.
  • Explictly document somewhere what packages we need to install so that your assignment runs on our machine with no issues.
    • Even better: use the scripts we provided in the Snakemake example to install needed packages for us
  • Your assignment must execute by us typing:
    • snakemake (preferred)
    • snakemake all into a terminal that is opened into your project's directory
  • To pass the course:
    • Your code must build without errors (unless we find something really weird, then we will reach out to you)
    • Must be version controlled, with each contributor making commits. One final commit is not enough.
    • Inputs and outputs must be in separate folders

Welcome Message

Date Posted: 2019-01-21

Welcome to the course "Programming Practices for Research in Economics: Foundations.""

Please take a look around the course website before the course begins. All the latest information about the course contents, schedule and course locations (which vary day-by day!) are available on these pages.

We particularly draw your attention to the:

  • Installation Guide. These pages walk you through the steps needed to install all the software for the course.
    • We expect you to have completed it before the course begins.
      • Note that we expect you have tried to complete the guide yourself, and we will not be there to do it all for you.
      • The guide is modular in nature - with most steps being independent of those before and after.
      • Learning to install software for scientific research on your own machine is an important task in itself - and we want to help you become self-sufficient in this regard.
  • Pre-Course Survey.
    • Please fill this out before the course begins.

To avoid clogging up everyone's inboxes with course email, all future important information will be posted on the course's Announcements page - be sure to check in there regularly. Smaller pieces of information and course chat will take place inside a chat enviroment, called Slack. Sign up to join the conversation here.

We look forward to seeing you on Wednesday, February 13th at 9.30am.

Best,

Lachlan and Julian