Notes

Notes from the margins of research, software, and ordinary life

Occasional essays and field notes from Jeffrey S. Racine: reproducible tools, public scholarship, computing workflows, nonparametric thinking, and the odd domestic case study when the machinery of daily life becomes interesting enough to write down.

Research and Public Scholarship

Notes on academic visibility, public profiles, reproducible work, and the research web.

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Computing and Open Tools

Quarto, blogdown, GitHub, R, and the practical craft of keeping public work online.

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Econometric Notes

Longer reflections on modeling habits, functional form, and statistical practice.

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Home and Infrastructure

Occasional notes where home systems, service providers, and technology collide.

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Research · Gallery of Code · CV · GitHub · RSS feed

Latest Notes

Abstract release graphic connecting mixed-degree local polynomial estimation, NOMAD, np, npRmpi, and crs

Mixed-degree local polynomials arrive in np (and npRmpi rises from the grave)

Joint bandwidth and degree selection across conditional estimators
Research
Computing
Open Web
File this one under “ideas that took a while to become mainstream”.
May 11, 2026
Jeffrey S. Racine
Abstract HVAC service note with warning marks

HVAC circles of hell (apologies Dante, sayonara Shipton’s)

A series of unfortunate events, or a case study in questionable business ethics?
Home
File this post under the “fool me three times, shame on me” category.
Jan 2, 2025
Jeffrey S. Racine

Tired old kitchen gets a face-lift

Home
We bought our current home in 2005 (an 1816 Heritage home). The previous owners had spruced up the kitchen to sell the house by installing maple door cabinets and engineered…
Dec 22, 2024
Jeffrey S. Racine

Lighting up six cats (hat tip to Bell, bid farewell to Cogeco)

Computing
Home
When life gives you lemons, you don’t have to make lemonade do you?
Nov 18, 2023
Jeffrey S. Racine
Abstract migration from blogdown to Quarto

Migrating from R blogdown to Quarto blogging

Computing
Open Web
Ahh, the joys and sorrows of technological progress!
Aug 11, 2023
Jeffrey S. Racine

Mockmill

My sourdough adventure

Home
Every once in a while I find myself daydreaming about various ways to up my game in the kitchen and, recently, that dream morphed into an obsession over trying to bake seriou…
Dec 15, 2018
Jeffrey S. Racine
Model specification graphic showing a straight line and flexible curve

Why This Function (WTF)? A diatribe on parametric model specification

Econometrics
Research
It is not uncommon to encounter practitioners who scribble down a parametric regression model and then proceed as if their model had generated the data.1 No model selection…
Jul 27, 2018
Jeffrey S. Racine
Network of public academic profile nodes

Academic networks & public profiles

Research
Open Web
Knowledge transfer and the dissemination of research are vital components of the academic mission, yet sometimes these are afforded no more than an afterthought.
Jun 23, 2018
Jeffrey S. Racine
Private repository and education graphic

GitHub Education and private repositories

Computing
Research
Yesterday I was discussing workflow with a PhD student who I recently started supervising and I encouraged her to get up to speed with GitHub, which she did.
Jun 1, 2018
Jeffrey S. Racine

More on blogdown

Computing
Open Web
The R package blogdown “is an effort to integrate R Markdown with static website generators” according to its creator, Yihui Xie. He writes “Besides the advantage in website…
May 29, 2018
Jeffrey S. Racine
Static website and blogdown graphic

Hugo, websites and blogdown

Computing
Open Web
This week I became aware of the R package blogdown, which was released on CRAN on 2017-08-22 with the announcement following shortly thereafter. Initially, given the name, I…
May 27, 2018
Jeffrey S. Racine
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