Software Show & Tell-- Why write statistical software?

Micah Altman

Senior Research Scientist

Institute for Quantitative Social Science

Harvard University

Polmeth '092

Why write software?*

[Micah Altman, 7/23/2009]

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 '093

What are the rewards?*

[Micah Altman, 7/23/2009]

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;Association for Computing Machinery, Mellon Foundation

* Extrinsic motivations

Polmeth '094

RgenoudW. Mebane & J. Sekhon [2009]Journal of Statistical SoftwareForthcoming.

Software Contributes to the Discipline

[Micah Altman, 7/23/2009]

- 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

Amelia 2 ,Version:1.2-12J. Honaker, G. King & M. Blackwell [2009]http://gking.harvard.edu/amelia/docs/amelia.pdf

Polmeth '095

Time for lunch…

[Micah Altman, 7/23/2009]

Thanks to… Drew Linzer, Jong Hee Park, Jens Hainmueller, Walter Mebane, and Matthew Blackwell for their presentations, and to Simon Jackman for organizing the session.