Lectures in Quantitative Economics: Source Files

Python version

This repository contains

• the rst source files for each python lecture in Quantitative Economics, in directory source/rst

• supporting Python code in source/_static/code/

• supporting figures, PDFs and other static assets in source/_static.

Installation

1. Download and install Anaconda for your platform (Windows/Linux/Mac OS).

2. Download or clone this repository.

3. Enter your local copy of the repository and run make setup.

The make setup command checks for and installs

• the quantecon package and

• the sphinxcontrib.jupyter extension for Sphinx.

Other dependencies are included with Anaconda.

Building notebooks

To transform the rst files in to ipynb files, enter the repo and run make notebooks.

The resulting ipynb files are stored in a temporary _build directory at the root level of the repository.

Viewing notebooks

Run make view

Additionally you can view a particular lecture directly:

• Example: make view lecture=about_py

The make view command launches a local instance of Jupyter and points it at the contents of the _build directory.

Workflow

Standard workflow for editing, say, lqcontrol.rst in the master branch is

1. Enter your local copy of lecture-source-py and type git pull to get the latest version
2. Run make notebooks
3. Run make view lecture=lqcontrol to see lqcontrol.ipynb in Jupyter
   • or just make view and then navigate to lqcontrol.ipynb in the browser window that pops up
4. Edit lqcontrol.rst in your favorite text editor
5. Run make notebooks again to generate a new version of lqcontrol.ipynb
   • the build system uses caching so this should be quick
   • you might need to open a new terminal window to run this command
6. Return to lqcontrol.ipynb in Jupyter and reload the page
7. Go to step 4 and repeat as necessary.

Finally, add, commit and push your changes using git.

Converting notebooks to RST files

Sometimes it's convenient to write a lecture as a notebook and then convert to RST

This guide is provided by TJS and requires pandoc 2.6 or newer

(Use pandoc --version to test)

1. This step is necessary only if you want to strip out dollar signs from maths

   • python latex_space_strip.py [myinputfile.ipynb] -o [myoutputfile.ipynb]

2. To convert, use

   • pandoc [myfilenamenew.pynb] -f ipynb+tex_math_dollars -t rst -s -o [newfilename.rst]

Style Guide - Writing Conventions

Mathematical Notation

Matrices always use square brackets. Use \begin{bmatrix} ... \end{bmatrix}

Sequences use curly brackets, such as \{ x_t \}_{t=0}^{\infty}

The use of align environments can be done using the \begin{algined} ... \end{aligned} as it is not a full math environment and works within the equation wrapping of sphinx.

"Independent and identically distributed" is abbreviated to "IID".

The headings should not use math-environment.

Labels must be written in all small alphabetical letters. Any special character should be avoided in labels except "dash" i.e "-"

All the cite key must use the default google scholar bibtex conventions.

Emphasis and Definitions

Use bold for definitions and italic for emphasis. For example,

• A closed set is a set whose complement is open.
• All consumers have identical endowments.

Titles and Headings

• Capitalization of all words for all titles.

  Example “How it Works: Data, Variables and Names”

Adding References

Adding a Citation to a Lecture

To add a reference to the text of a QuantEcon lecture you need to use the :cite:<bibtex-label> directive.

For example

:cite:`StokeyLucas1989`, chapter 2

is rendered rendered in HTML and LaTex as:

[SLP89], chapter 2

Adding a new reference to QuantEcon

To add a new reference to the project, a bibtex entry needs to be added to QuantEcon.lectures/_static/quant-econ.bib.

Sphinx and Restructured Text

Editing

The syntax of the source files is reStructuredText.

Here is a nice primer on how to write reStructuredText files.

Here is the documentation for the Jinja template syntax.

Helpful Links

• A nice Sphinx tutorial
• Another rst primer