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Software Show & Tell -- Why write statistical software?

Software Show & Tell -- Why write statistical software?. Micah Altman Senior Research Scientist Institute for Quantitative Social Science Harvard University. Why write software?*. Solve a real problem Do good Do reproducible research Understand your subject.

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Software Show & Tell -- Why write statistical software?

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  1. Software Show & Tell-- Why write statistical software? Micah Altman Senior Research Scientist Institute for Quantitative Social Science Harvard University

  2. Why write software?* • Solve a real problem • Do good • Do reproducible research • Understand your subject “It has been often said that a person does not really understand something until he teaches it to someone else. Actually a person does not really understand something until he can teach it to a computer, i.e., express it as an algorithm" – Donald Knuth * (Mostly) internal motivations Polmeth '09

  3. What are the rewards?* Get credit! • Increase citations for related publications • Publish and cite software: Journal of Statistical Software, Computational Statistics & Data Analysis, Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics, Transactions on Mathematical Software Computational Economics, Computational Statistics Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, Statistics and Computing, Journal of Statistical Computation and Simulation, SIAM Journal on Scientific Computing, Communications in Statistics - Simulation and Computation, Computing Science and Statistics Make money! • Direct sales, SBIR awards • Enhance consulting, research grants Win awards, fame and glory! • Society for Political Methodology; APSA Information Technology & Politics;Associationfor Computing Machinery, Mellon Foundation * Extrinsic motivations Polmeth '09

  4. Software Contributes to the Discipline • Supports teaching and learning • Supports the analysis of political behavior and systems • Enables wide application of appropriate methods • Embodies advances in methods by political scientists Rice Virtual Lab in StatisticsD. Scott, et. al [2008] http://onlinestatbook.com/rvls.html D-W Nominate, 10-1-2004K. Poole & H. Rosenthal [2004] http://voteview.ucsd.edu/dw-nominate.htmc RgenoudW. Mebane & J. Sekhon [2009] Journal of Statistical Software Forthcoming. Amelia 2 ,Version:1.2-12J. Honaker, G. King & M. Blackwell [2009] http://gking.harvard.edu/amelia/docs/amelia.pdf Polmeth '09

  5. Time for lunch… Thanks to… Drew Linzer,JongHeePark, Jens Hainmueller, Walter Mebane, and Matthew Blackwell for their presentations, and to Simon Jackmanfor organizing the session. Polmeth '09

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