EC 325: Econometrics

Course materials for EC 325 at Colby College.

View the syllabus here.

Keep in mind that only reference materials, data, and ungraded in-class exercises are here. Graded assignments, including concept checks and problem sets, will only be posted on Moodle. Don't forget you also have to submit your work to Moodle.

Getting Started

Follow the steps in EC325 Installation Guide to get all the software set up for the course.

What is Git and GitHub?

Git is a version control system—software that tracks changes to files over time. Think of it like "Track Changes" in Word, but much more powerful. Git lets you:

• Keep a complete history of every change made to a project
• Revert to previous versions if something breaks
• See exactly what changed, when, and by whom

GitHub is a website that hosts Git repositories (projects) online. It makes it easy to share code and collaborate. For this class, I use GitHub to distribute course materials to you—when I update slides or add new datasets, you can download those changes with a single click.

You don't need to become a Git expert for this class. You only need to know how to:

1. Clone — download the repository to your computer (you'll do this once)
2. Pull — download updates when I announce them

That's it! The instructions below will walk you through both.

Updating Course Materials

When I announce updates to the course materials:

1. Open the project in RStudio
2. Go to the Git tab (usually in the upper-right pane)
3. Click the Pull button (down arrow)

That's it! Your materials are now up to date.

Repository Structure

ec325/
├── slides/            # The slides and code used to generate them
├── book/              # Raw code for generating book chapters
├── data/              # Datasets for labs and problem sets
├── labs/              # In-class lab exercises
├── student-work/      # YOUR work goes here (not tracked by Git!)
├── other/             # Other documents and files I use
└── docs/              # Rendered book (also viewable online at link below)

Viewing the Lecture Notes Book

Online: https://www.raymondcaraher.com/ec325/

Locally: Open docs/index.html in your web browser.

Where to Save Your Work

Always save your scripts and work in the student-work/ folder.

This folder is ignored by Git, so:

• Your work won't be overwritten when you pull updates
• You won't see annoying "untracked files" warnings
• You can create all sorts of sub-directories in here to keep your work through the semester organized (e.g., problem-set-1, project-data, etc.)

Troubleshooting

"I'm getting merge conflicts"

This usually means you edited the course files I make directly. To fix:

1. Save any work you want to keep somewhere else
2. In the Terminal tab, run: git checkout .
3. Pull again

To avoid this, always work in the student-work/ folder. You are more than welcome to mess around with the files I use to generate course content, but I recommend you do so by copy-pasting the content from this directory to some other directory not associated with Git.

"Pull isn't working"

Make sure you're connected to the internet and try again. If you see an error message, copy it and email me.

"I accidentally deleted something"

First, try to restore it from your Trash folder. If you can't find it, as long its one of the files I made, then it's no problem—just pull again and the original files will be restored. But if it is one of the files you made in the student-work/ folder, then it may be gone for good. Email me and we can try to track it down. In any case, it is good practice to back-up the repository every once a while to some other location on your computer.

Questions?

If you run into issues, come to office hours or send me an email at rcaraher@colby.edu