28 · Moving forward

Thursday, Dec 3, 2026

Materials for this session are not published yet. They appear here before class.

Objectives

By the end of this session you can:

  • Reconstruct the semester’s pipeline map from memory.
  • Name which checks caught real errors, and where.
  • Carry your checks.R into your own research.
  • State your own AI-use policy.
  • Say what each tool you learned cannot see.
  • Name what you will read this year that is not economics.

What we cover

  • The thirteen investigations, replayed as one arc.
  • The verification ledger: which checks caught what, all semester.
  • The audit, revisited. Every constructed variable this semester got checked against something outside itself: a gold set for the machine labels, a second product for the exposures, ground truth for the images, a hand-checked sample for the transcripts. Same move each time, different data. Name yours, and say what it would take to convince a referee.
  • The checks.R showcase.
  • The reveal: how this course was built, AI-assisted and disclosed, under its own policy.
  • What the tools do not replace. Every method here has a limit. A model answers whether or not the question was sound. A pipeline runs whether or not the variable means anything. Nothing in the toolkit makes you careful, patient, or curious. Those decide the quality of the work, and they are the part nobody can automate for you.
  • Know what your instrument cannot see. A band index does not measure what you wish it measured. A transcript drops what the room knew. A classifier’s label is a prediction, not an observation. Write the limit into your methods section, in your own words.
  • Read outside economics. Questions come from noticing things, and you notice more when you read widely. History, geography, the other social sciences, the domain literature of whatever you study, good reporting. A narrow reading list produces narrow questions. Come with three things you read this year that were not economics, and what each one made you want to measure.
  • Where to take this next: the methods we skipped, and how to learn one on your own.

Verification habit. All of them. The posture is the job now.