Unit name | Economic Data |
---|---|
Unit code | EFIM10016 |
Credit points | 20 |
Level of study | C/4 |
Teaching block(s) |
Teaching Block 1 (weeks 1 - 12) |
Unit director | Dr. Hans Sievertsen |
Open unit status | Not open |
Pre-requisites |
None |
Co-requisites |
None |
School/department | School of Economics |
Faculty | Faculty of Social Sciences and Law |
This unit focuses on obtaining, processing and presenting economic data. The unit consists of three elements. First, students are introduced to the software packages MS Excel and R, including fundamentals in programming. Second, we discuss principles of good and poor data visualization practice with applications in R and MS Excel. Third, the students learn concepts that are important for understanding and presenting economic data in a non-misleading way, for example the definition of GDP, price-indices, survey weights and log-scales. The main software for the unit is R (which is freely available). Methods and solutions using MS Excel will also be shown.
Topics covered will include
The unit will draw on links that the department has with the Office for National Statistics.
Students will be able:
10 hours of large group lectures
20 hours of large group computer lab sessions
The unit is assessed by a summative coursework project, which will count 100% towards the final mark. The maximum project length will be 15 pages. This assesses all of the learning outcomes.
Schwabish, J. A. 2014. "An Economist's Guide to Visualizing Data." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 28(1): 209-34. DOI: 10.1257/jep.28.1.209
Few, S. 2012. “Show Me the Numbers”, Analytics Press; 2nd New edition (30 Jun. 2012)
Grolemund, G. and H. Wickham 2016. “R for Data Science”, O’Reilly
Cairo, A. 2016. “The Turthful Art”, New Riders; 1st edition. Chapter 2.
Tufte, E. R. 2001. “The Visual Display of Quantitative Information”, Graphics Press USA; 2nd edition (31 Jan. 2001) (optional)