Schedule 2026

Graduate Quantitative Economics and Datascience

This site covers the first half of ECON526, taught by Jesse Perla.

See Cold Calling for classroom discussion and participation expectations.

Problem Sets and Exams

Clone the notebooks repository to get the Jupyter notebooks, and submit on Canvas. See Canvas for the due dates.

• Problem Set 0 and PDF. Covers the MA Math Camp material and is submitted as a PDF, so you can start right away. Solutions
• Problem Set 1 and ipynb. A short assignment checking your Python and Jupyter installation. Solutions
• Problem Set 2 and ipynb due. Solutions
• Problem Set 3 and ipynb due. Solutions
• Problem Set 4 and ipynb
• Problem Set 5 and ipynb
• Practice Questions 1 and ipynb for Midterm 1
• Practice Questions 2 and ipynb for Midterm 2
• Practice Quiz in ORCA, the questions without solutions. See Canvas for the ORCA window.
• (Tentatively) Week of September 28 - Midterm 1: Self-scheduled subject to computer room availability.
• (Tentatively) Week of October 19 - Midterm 2: Self-scheduled subject to computer room availability.

See Exams and Scheduling for ORCA reservations, locations, and policies.

Schedule

Each entry links the slides.

• September 9 - Foundations of Numerical Linear Algebra
• September 14 - Starting at eigenvalues and eigenvectors, finish Foundations of Numerical Linear Algebra, then Linear Algebra and Dynamics
• September 16 - Starting with the PageRank, finish Linear Algebra and Dynamics, then Optimization, Positive Definiteness, and Least Squares
• September 21 - Starting with positive definiteness and eigenvalues, continue Optimization, Positive Definiteness, and Least Squares
• September 23 - Finish Optimization, Positive Definiteness, and Least Squares, then Probability and Uncertainty
• September 28 - Finish Probability and Uncertainty, then Classification
• September 30 - NATIONAL DAY FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION (NO CLASS)
• October 5 - Finish Classification, then Clustering and Discrete Latent Variables
• October 7 - Dimension Reduction and Continuous Latent Variables
• October 12 - THANKSGIVING (NO CLASS)
• October 14 - Text Classification, then Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models
• October 19 - Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models and Open-Weight LLMs on Your Machine
• October 21 - Optional materials: Handwriting and Digitization; Image Classification; Spatial Data for Economics