Earlier quoted context omitted.
“If you asked me to predict what a quantitative economist would be using, it would be Python, followed by R, and maybe followed by Java or C, or something like that.” I too was looking for good data. It’s hard to measure this as practical application doesn’t line up with publication. I was surprised when I started working in health 10 years ago that the predominant tool was Excel, and then SAS. Even 5 years ago in he…
Some departments in the FDA require clinical trial data to be submitted in SAS formats :-/
Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
61–70 of 74 posts
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forget that a typical Python Jupyter notebook will import a dozen Python packages. Versioning that it's still a major problem in the ecosystem.
> Versioning that it's still a major problem in the ecosystem. There's actually a perfectly good way to solve this problem: a virtual environment with a requirements.txt file.
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Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
You forget that a typical Python Jupyter notebook will import a dozen Python packages. Versioning that it's still a major problem in the ecosystem.
> Versioning that it's still a major problem in the ecosystem. There's actually a perfectly good way to solve this problem: a virtual environment with a requirements.txt file.
For research in particular, I'd suggest a Pipfile.lock. That will ensure that the packages installed match exactly, not just by version number.
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#64Beyond the cool python angle, I find the following statement quite interesting: "...James Somers argued that Jupyter notebooks may replace the traditional research paper typically shared as a PDF..." I've only been exposed to jupyter notebook references here and there...but i guess i should become a little more familiar with them.
"Jupyter notebooks may replace the traditional research paper typically shared as a PDF..." - hardly a replacement as long as Jupyter notebooks are not self-sufficient files you can download and view offline everywhere. Even if you have up-to-date versions of Python and all the libraries installed you still have to run a server and open it in a browser which is a way more clumsy than just opening a PDF in Okular/Evin…
You can view them just as easily as you would a pdf. Running the code inside them is what takes extra effort. Which isn’t necessary if you just want to understand the processes being applied.
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Jupyter notebooks may replace the traditional research paper typically shared as a PDF..." - hardly a replacement as long as Jupyter notebooks are not self-sufficient files you can download and view offline everywhere. Even if you have up-to-date versions of Python and all the libraries installed you still have to run a server and open it in a browser which is a way more clumsy than just opening a PDF in Okular/Evin…
You can view them just as easily as you would a pdf. Running the code inside them is what takes extra effort. Which isn’t necessary if you just want to understand the processes being applied.
Can they include pre-rendered code execution results to display when code execution is not available?
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#66Am I missing something or are parts of this article really distorted? For example, this seems to set up most of the article: "Economics involves a lot of math and statistics. The most commonly used tools to crunch numbers are the spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel and programming languages Stata and Mathematica." Is this really true? Mathematica and Stata seem like established but niche products to me at this point…
Depends on the field. In the social sciences, Mathematica and Stata are probably the most widely used tools. Might be that way for economics too, but I'm not sure.
I believe they prefer window like interfaces instead of scripting or programming your models.
Stata used to be only command line driven and probably still has that functionality ( I used it in 1997-2007) ; then again as a mathematician I prefer R. Or any computer algebra system.
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#67Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can view them just as easily as you would a pdf. Running the code inside them is what takes extra effort. Which isn’t necessary if you just want to understand the processes being applied.
Can they include pre-rendered code execution results to display when code execution is not available?
Yes, they do by default if I’m not mistaken. The output “cells” are saved alongside the code.
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#69> he tried to use Mathematica to share one of his studies in a way that anyone could explore every detail of his data and methods. It didn’t work. He says that Mathematica’s owner, Wolfram Research, made it too difficult to share his work in a way that didn’t require other people to use the proprietary software, too Sometimes I wonder where Mathematica would be if it were open sourced lets say in 2010. It had such a…
Not true: Python is callable from a Wolfram Notebook: https://reference.wolfram.com/language/tutorial/ConfigurePyt...
Romer also published notebooks and PDFs without issue previously: https://assets.aeaweb.org/assets/production/articles-attachm...
Something about his story is odd. Given his shady past at the World Bank, who knows what's actually true.
Re: Economics Nobel laureate Paul Romer is a Python programming convert
#70Does anyone have any insight into why Paul Romer is a Julia skeptic?
In the blog post
https://paulromer.net/jupyter-mathematica-and-the-future-of-...
he says:
"Which reminds me. If you are a Julia enthusiast, how do you suppose the investors in this new language plan to make their big score?"
Also there's this:
https://twitter.com/paulmromer/status/985507319114096640
It doesn't seem like he's followed up on his threat/promise to write a blog post about why he's not a Julia enthusiast, however.