Blog Launch

Forty years ago I was sitting in a hotel room in New York City being interviewed for a tenured position at The University of Akron. At my on-campus interview I was given the challenge of rebuilding the graduate curriculum of Statistics and Econometrics. Revised in my image, they included an emphasis on Applied Econometrics, hands-on computing with real data sets and code level programming in SAS. 

Economists have always in my lifetime been sophisticated economic data analysts and I have taken note as the term and title of data science and data scientist has arisen that economists cover a vast amount of the territory of what is data science and in a way always have. 

One year ago, I organized for our Department and College, the first Data Science Day held at The University of Akron featuring two of our MA alumni that held the title of data scientist. A survey of our graduates found that all of our graduates alumni and about half of  our undergraduates were in data analytic positions and many in data scientist or data science positions. 

That economists make  good data scientists will be the subject of many posts of this blog.  I will also comment on issues of economic literacy which I regard as a crisis in our world.  I am less likely to comment on policy than on principles, the former being befuddled with all manner of things and the latter more inviolate, removed from opinion and evidenced based.