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Shiny app for Spatial Econometric classes

8 messages · Rolf Turner, Raphael Saldanha, Spencer Graves +1 more

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Hello all!

Me and Professor Eduardo Almeida (UFJF, Brazil) are creating an R Shiny app for Spatial Econometric classes. The app is called Tobler and currently offers some tests and estimation of cross-section and panel models.

The app is hosted at shinyapps: https://rfsaldanha.shinyapps.io/tobler/ 

The code is open at GitHub: https://github.com/rfsaldanha/tobler 

All suggestions are welcome!


Best regards,

Raphael Saldanha
Funda??o Oswaldo Cruz - Brazil
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On Wed, 7 Jul 2021 18:09:50 -0300
Raphael Saldanha <rfsaldanha at gmail.com> wrote:

            
<SNIP>

I hope that you won't find this comment offensive, but I could not
resist sending it to you, since I am rather fanatical (pedantic?) about
correct English usage.

The expression "Me and Professor Eduardo Almeida" is both (a) bad
grammar and (b) bad form.  (a) Instead of the pronoun "Me" (accusative or
objective case) you should use "I" (nominative or subjective case), since
this expression is the subject of the sentence.  (b) It is "bad form"
(it sounds vaguely self-promoting)  to put a first person pronoun before the
names of others to which it is linked.  You should say "Professor
Eduardo Almeida and I are creating ....".

I realise that English is surely a second language for you, and your
English is infinitely better than my non-existent Portuguese.  Your
English is actually quite good, probably better than that of many
native English speakers.  Nevertheless the expression that you use is
not correct and you should strive to avoid such usage.

Again let me express the hope that you won't take offence at this
comment.

cheers,

Rolf Turner
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No offense taken. Thanks for the remark and opportunity to learn.


Cheers,

Raphael
#
Estimado Raphael:


	  I don't know any Portuguese either, and I'm very grateful that you've 
made the effort to ask this group in a language not your own.


	  In primary school, I learned that constructions like, "Me and 
Professor ..." too often sounded like, "Mean Professor ...".


	  Un fuerte abrazo ("A big hug", as a Uruguayan man whom I had not 
previously met ended a letter inviting me to talk at a conference).


	  Spencer Graves
On 7/8/21 5:32 AM, Raphael Saldanha wrote:
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Estimado Spencer,

Thanks for your kind words. Actually, that construction is not standard in Portuguese also (although that does not sound pedant or with some bad intention for our ears). I revised the text three times and used an app for grammar correction before sending. Anyway, it was a mistake by all means. 

To learn Spatial Econometrics and other fields require from us additional efforts. There is just a few books or materials in Portuguese. But I try to approach this difficult as an opportunity to learn.

Indeed, one of the reasons for building the app was to facilitate the use of the methods for people that are learning R. *Professor Eduardo and I* teach annually a course on that field and we face this challenge. With the pandemics and Zoom classes, we hope that the app and our scripts will help the students to learn R.


Um forte abra?o,

Raphael Saldanha
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1 day later
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Returning to the "Tobler" shiny app:

The main serious weakness is the name and the approach. It is not and has 
never been the case that "Everything is related to everything else, but 
near things are more related than distant things." This is and has always 
been an oversimplification, disguising the underlying entitation/support 
problem. Are the units of observation appropriate for the scale of the 
unobserved spatial process?

Tobler (1970) https://doi.org/10.2307/143141 was published in the same SI 
as Olsson (1970) https://doi.org/10.2307/143140 (Olsson precedes Tobler), 
but Olsson does grasp the important point that spatial autocorrelation is 
not immanent in spatial phenomena, but often is engendered by 
inappropriate entitation, by omitted variables and/or inappropriate 
functional form. The key quote from Olsson is on p. 228:

"The existence of such autocorrelations makes it tempting to agree with 
Tobler (1970, 236 [my interpolation, the original refers to a conference 
paper]) that 'everything is related to everything else, but near things 
are more related than distant things.' On the other hand, the fact that 
the autocorrelations seem to hide systematic specification errors suggests 
that the elevation of this statement to the status of 'the first law of 
geography' is at best premature. At worst, the statement may represent the 
spatial variant of the post hoc fallacy, which would mean  that 
coinincidence has been mistaken for a causal relation."

The status of the "first law" is very similar to the belief that John Snow 
induced the cause of cholera as water-borne from a map. It may be a good 
way of selling GIS, but it isn't accurate; Snow had a strong working 
microbiological hypothesis prior to visiting Soho, and the map was 
prepared after the Broad street pump was disabled as documentation that 
the hypothesis held (see https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(00)02442-9 
Brody et al. 2000).

So the framing of the shiny app is unfortunate, and spatial econometrics 
is not a toolbox, rather a way of loooking at mis-specification when space 
is involved, I think.

Hope this isn't too critical,

Roger
On Thu, 8 Jul 2021, Raphael Saldanha wrote:

            

  
    
2 days later
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Perhaps it is just my connection, but it is not possible to load any data, 
so I cannot evaluate the other components in practice.

I do however think that you need to acknowledge the results of Piras and 
Prucha, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.regsciurbeco.2014.03.002, and try to 
point out the dangers of pre-testing, rather than estimating the most 
inclusive model first, and simplifying from there.

Roger
On Fri, 9 Jul 2021, Roger Bivand wrote:

            

  
    
2 days later
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Thanks Prof. Bivand for your considerations about name and approach. We will debate your points on our next meeting about the project. 

Additionally, I want to thank you for your extensive contribution to the field. Without your packages and publications (and from others), this project would be unthinkable. 


Best regards,

Raphael Saldanha
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