What is Literate Programming for Social Scientsts?

Speakers:

Roxanne Connelly, University of Edinburgh

Zoom meeting password: nAug9kPU

Writing statistical code is now a central skill in quantitative data analysis. This session takes a step back from the mainstream focus on how to run statistical data analyses in statistical data analysis packages; and considers the way in which we write code. This session will consider the application of principles from computer science to the work we undertake in the social sciences. Centrally we will consider the application of Literate programming to the social sciences.Literate programming is a programming paradigm introduced by computer scientist; Professor Donald Knuth. This paradigm represents a move away from writing computer programs for computers; and enables programmers to develop programmes which incorporate the logic and order of the thought processes underlying a piece of code.The principles discussed in this session are language agnostic and can be applied across statistical programming languages (e.g. R; Python; Stata; SPSS).