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Apr 19

When economic professors making simple (MS Excel) coding mistakes …


reinhart_rogoff_coding_error_0

Basic MS Excel mistake in a paper published by two Harvard Economic Professors in a top-tier Economic journal!?

This week, the hottest topic in economics or even in academia as a whole would be the paper publishes by Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash and Robert Pollin |  (HAP) on 4/15/2013 critiquing a widely cited paper by Reinhart and Rogoff on the debt ration and GDP of many countries titled “Growth in a Time of Debt“.

Screen Shot 2013-04-19 at 02.29.39

What is exciting is that HAP argue that R&R has made an error when using MS Excel to analysis such macroeconomic data. That paper by HAP titled “Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogo ff” would probably one of legendary critique papers in economics to date.

Screen Shot 2013-04-19 at 02.37.29

As we can expect, there are many feedbacks from both academics and non-academic world. The following is the list of articles discussing this incidences.

  1. The Wall Street Journal
    Reinhart-Rogoff Response to Critique
  2. The Financial Times (Chris Cook)
    Reinhart-Rogoff recrunch the numbers
  3. The Economist
    Revisiting Reinhart-Rogoff
  4. Slate.com ()
    “Is The Reinhart-Rogoff Result Based on a Simple Spreadsheet Error?“
  5. Marginal Revolution (Tyler Cowen)
    “An update on the Reinhart and Rogoff critique and some observations“
  6. Next New Deal (Mike Konczal)
    “Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems.“
  7. Christopher Gandrud
    “Reinhart & Rogoff: Everyone makes coding mistakes, we need to make it easy to find them + Graphing uncertainty“
  8. Simply Statistics (Roger Peng)
    “I wish economists made better plots“
  9. Paul Krugman 
    “Holy Coding Error, Batman“
  10. Phillip Price
    “Data problems, coding errors…what can be done?“
  11. Next New Deal (Mike Konczal)
    “Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems.“

Jan 13

How to do a Systematic Literature Review


Here are some useful guides and references

Denyer, D. and Tranfield, D. (2009), “Producing a systematic review”, Ch. 39, in Buchanan, D. and Bryman, A. (Eds), The Sage Handbook of Organizational Research Methods, Sage Publications Ltd, London, pp. 671-89. (Link)

Rousseau, D.M., Manning, J. and Denyer, D. (2008), “Evidence in management and organizational science: assembling the field’s full weight of scientific knowledge through syntheses”, The Academy of Management Annals, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 475-515. (Link)

Smithey, I. (2012), “The craft of writing theory articles: variety and similarity in AMR”, Academy of Management Review, Vol. 37 No. 3, 327-31. (Link)

Jan 11

phd032505s
2 Comments

Tips for PhD Examination (Viva Voce)


 

PhD examination (a.k.a. Viva Voce) has been perceived as the decisive event for the successful of the candidate. However, I believe that there is not thing much to prepare if you have throughly know your thesis inside out. However, the candidate may need know to manage their nerve and excitement during the exam. When I was preparing for my viva (on yesterday), which I passed with a minor correction category, I have been consulted some suggestions online, which I found very useful. At least they give your some senses of what will be going on. After my viva I have 5 top tips for the candidates who are preparing for the time of their (PhD) life. Here they are.

  1. Working out your attitude
    phd031005sAiming to thrive not just to survive. Make an impression to the examiners that you deserve a doctorate degree!
  2. Assuming you are  an examiner
    phd031905s
    (re)Read your thesis as if your were an examiners or an reviewer. Put yourself on their shoes, then you will get an idea how they might assess you.
  3. Having a mock viva
    phd032705s
    To excel in almost anything, we need to practice, practice and practice. It’s the same with exam and the viva voce. It’s great to have a mock viva with at least with your supervisors or PhD fellows. Pick those who are similar to your examiners in terms of research approaches.
  4. Practicing mindfulness
    phd030905sI cope with such an intense and important discussions in the viva, we need to be mindfulness. This will help us understand the questions and answer it better. Meditation is a good way to practice mindfulness. You can do it by just sit on your chair in the office and close your eyes. Then watch your breath and thought. Knowing what you are doing.
  5. Having a good Viva Voce eve night
    phd032405s
    The day before the viva is about body preparation. You have to go to the viva with the fresh understanding of your thesis and fresh mind and health. The dinner of the viva eve and the breakfast of the viva day as well as the lunch if your viva will start in the afternoon. Have a good and enough foods. Medicine rarely helps but a good sleep and good food will.

Special Tips

While you are reading your thesis or several suggestions and tips for PhD viva I provided at the end of this post, you may listen to this soundtrack of my favourite movie “A Beautiful Mind”

Mock Viva at Cardiff University

This mock viva includes the following cast of Academic Staff:

  • Professor Paul Atkinson (Presenter)
  • Dr Sara Delamont (Candidate for Viva)
  • Dr David Mills (External Examiner)
  • Professor Teresa Rees (Chair)
  • Dr Sally Holland (Internal Examiner)
  • Dr Maggie Gregory (Supervisor)

External resources

  1. Dr Jill’s top ten viva tips (pass your PhD oral exam)
  2. jobs.ac.uk’s Ten Tips for getting through your PhD Viva
  3. Warwick’s Tips for dealing with the Ph.D. viva
  4. Dr. Sustainable’s 10 PhD Viva Survival Tips
  5. Dr. Andrew Broad’s Preparing for the Viva
  6. { random thoughts }’s phd viva: preparing for the research viva
  7. The Guardian’s Survive your viva
  8. Sciencecareer’s The PhD Viva: Thrive or Survive
  9. http://www.jwelford.demon.co.uk/’s PhD Viva
  10. De-mystifying & Preparing for the Doctoral Viva
  11. PostgraduateResource.info’s Tips and advice for the PhD oral examination/viva
  12. The final hurdle: getting through the PhD viva
  13. In the dark? Preparing for the PhD viva
  14. Tips on how to prepare for a viva
  15. Taking the viva in your stride
  16. Preparing for PhD viva voce: a personal reflection by David Twigg
  17. LSE’s resources for Preparing for and handling the viva
    - Presentation (PowerPoint)
    - Top ten viva questions (Word)
    - Viva advice from a recent LSE graduate (PowerPoint)
  18. University of Leicester’s Preparing for your viva
  19. The Independent’s How to shine at your viva
  20. David Denyer’s Typical questions asked in a PhD viva

Dec 31

2 Comments

2012 in review by The WordPress.com


Here is a 2012 annual report for this blog produced by The WordPress.com.

My top post this year based on number of views are

  1. R-Uni (A List of Free R Tutorials and Resources in Universities webpages)
    29 COMMENTS February 2012
  2. R Style Guide
    7 COMMENTS June 2012

Click here to see the complete report.

Dec 22

Learn to use R for FREE with Coursera


coursera_logo_RGB

Coursera is offering free courses about R among other interesting subjects. The first one on the application of R in financial econometrics is happening this week (but you can still enroll). There are two more courses starting in January 2013 are more about using R to analyse the data. The differences between the two are stated that:

“This course (Data Analysis by Jeff Leek) will focus on how to plan, carry out, and communicate analyses of real data sets. While we will cover the basics of how to use R to implement these analyses, the course will not cover specific programming skills. Computing for Data Analysis will cover some statistical programming topics that will be useful for this class, but it is not a prerequisite for the course”.

There are more FREE online tutorials about R apart from those in Coursera. Here is the like to list of more than 90 R tutorials.

Introduction to Computational Finance and Financial Econometrics

by Eric Zivot

Learn mathematical and statistical tools and techniques used in quantitative and computational finance. Use the open source R statistical programming language to analyze financial data, estimate statistical models, and construct optimized portfolios. Analyze real world data and solve real world problems.

Next session: Dec 17th 2012 (10 weeks long)

More information: here

Data Analysis 

by Jeff Leek

Learn about the most effective data analysis methods to solve problems and achieve insight.

Next Session:
Jan 2nd 2013 (4 weeks long) You are enrolled!
Workload: 3-5 hours/week

More information: here

Computing for Data Analysis

Roger D. Peng

This course is about learning the fundamental computing skills necessary for effective data analysis. You will learn to program in R and to use R for reading data, writing functions, making informative graphs, and applying modern statistical methods.

Next Session:
Jan 22nd 2013 (8 weeks long) You are enrolled!
Workload: 3-5 hours/week

More information: here

The VDO of this course are also available in YouTube channel of Dr.Roger Peng. So you can check it out below.

Playlist: Week 1

Playlist: Week 2

Playlist: Week 3

Playlist: Week 4

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