Hello, World!

Definition: “a “Hello, World!” program is a computer program that outputs or displays “Hello, World!” to a user. Being a very simple program in most programming languages, it is often used to illustrate the basic syntax of a programming language for a working program. It is often the very first program people write when they are new to a language”. source: Wikipedia

A couple of years ago, when I started researching for methodology for my new project at work, I began with reading academic articles on this topic. I’ve been taught so during my PhD. And this was one of the best lessons: “do not reinvent the wheel, see what others have done”.

However, my literature review was a bitter disappointment. For datasets similar to mine, the best model in the journals left much to be desired in terms of fit. No way we could use that methodology for forecasts or business decisions. The rescue came from R-bloggers, Stackoverflow and Kaggle.

I believe, open source is our future in Applied Economics. In the more and more dynamic environment, this is the only way for keeping up with innovations. Terabytes of new data are being generated at every instance. This information should be analyzed and leveraged for data-driven actions ASAP. In such a vibrant world, open access sources give undeniable advantages over the traditional journals. Besides the speed mentioned above, open source materials appeal to me because

• a) sharing with the community of experts means quality control and collective thinking, which generate better ideas
• b) only whatever works is surviving. The algorithms, methods, etc which aren’t applicable, get lost in the Nowhere Land.

I’m thrilled about becoming a part of the Data Analysts Online Community, and I hope this blog will describe my journey of learning Data Science by doing it.