Economics student wins award to develop teaching materials

Max Sties receives one of just two graduate student Centre for Teaching and Learning Summer Student Awards

Economics Staff - 10 April 2015

Economics Ph.D. student Max Sties is the recipient of a Centre for Teaching and Learning graduate student Summer Student Award for 2015. Max will be working with Professor Sebastian Fossati to develop resources for the labs in ECON 299 Quantitative Methods in Economics, and ECON 399 Introductory Econometrics.

The Department of Economics has moved to increase the use of R in labs. In the labs, students apply statistical methods to solve practical, real world problems. R is widely used, so knowledge of the program will be an asset in the job market. As well, R is open source software that students can download free of charge onto their personal computer, so this should free up space in the Tory Computer Lab.

Max will be preparing teaching materials that showcase methods of utilizing R. He will write sample code in R to solve statistical problems introduced in class, and develop a digital lab manual that explains code and links to code documentation. These materials should be useful to both students and instructors who are not currently familiar with R.

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