2026-09-07

2026-09-07

Summary

Moved the Econ 527 Quarto slide work from /Users/vmarmer/Documents/teaching/Econ_527/slides/ into this folder, published the first deck, and rebuilt the course page so it lists slides first and the typed lecture notes below them. Updated the guidance file in each of the four folders the course spans.

File changes

• Created here: 527_01_regression_ols.qmd (1062 lines), _quarto.yml, slides_no_caps.css, PLAN.md, .gitignore (ignores /.quarto/), and output/ with 527_01_regression_ols.html, 527_01_regression_ols.pdf (120 KB) and 527_01_regression_ols_slides.html. All moved from the old folder, then re-rendered here.
• Rewritten: files/Econ_527/CLAUDE.md. It used to say the folder held compiled PDFs only. It now covers the deck workflow, the render and check commands, the frontmatter conventions, how to add a deck to the course page, and the other three folders.
• Modified: _teaching/2023-09-Econ-527.md gained a Slides section above Lecture notes, plus one   paragraph between the two so the sections do not sit on top of each other.
• Modified: repo CLAUDE.md describes this folder as slides plus PDFs, in the structure listing, the course section and the build commands.
• Modified outside this repo, both untracked in their own folders by design: /Users/vmarmer/Documents/teaching/Econ_527/CLAUDE.md (records the move, drops the dead render command, rewrites the closing table) and /Users/vmarmer/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/Notability/527/CLAUDE.md (adds the decks to its table and says drafting decks is now the main use of transcripts/final/).
• Deleted: /Users/vmarmer/Documents/teaching/Econ_527/slides/, empty after the move apart from a Quarto cache. It was untracked in vadimmarmer/Econ-527, so no git bookkeeping followed.

Key results

• The deck re-rendered from its new location with exit code 0, all three outputs rebuilt. qmd_render_check.py reports clean on both HTML files: 0 math errors, no raw command leaks, no undefined macros, no macro block in the text, both self-contained.
• Published and verified live: the course page and all three deck files return HTTP 200 at vadimmarmer.com. GitHub Pages built after each push.
• Three commits: dec274c the move and the page, c042615 the cross-references, 482a2d8 the spacing. Total 8221 insertions across 11 files.
• Both project memory folders for this course exist, one under the current folder name -Econ_527 and one under the earlier -Econ-527, and the guidance files disagreed about which to read. Each now names both. Every path cited in the four guidance files was checked to exist.
• The deck is 58 slides and ends at the OLS formula with the least-squares proof; PLAN.md holds the approved outline and sketches the decks after it.

Cross-references

• PLAN.md fixes the notation for every deck: transpose ^\top, error U_i, and the \E{}, \Var{}, \Cov{} macros in a hidden block after the first heading.
• A deck is drafted from two read-only sources: the typed notes in /Users/vmarmer/Documents/teaching/Econ_527/lecture_notes/ and the transcriptions in /Users/vmarmer/Library/CloudStorage/Dropbox/Notability/527/transcripts/final/.
• The course page _teaching/2023-09-Econ-527.md links to output/527_01_regression_ols.html, its PDF, and its slide show.
• Slide style feedback collected for Econ 326 lives in /Users/vmarmer/.claude/projects/-Users-vmarmer-GitHub-vadimmarmer-github-io/memory/ and applies to these decks too.

2026-09-15

Summary

The second deck, on the properties of the OLS estimator, was copied here from /Users/vmarmer/Documents/teaching/Econ_527/slides/, rendered, linked on the course page, and pushed. It is live.

File changes

• Created: 527_02_ols_properties.qmd (886 lines, 6 sections, 52 slides), PLAN_02.md (its outline, copied beside it), and the three rendered files output/527_02_ols_properties.html, ..._slides.html and ....pdf.
• Modified: _teaching/2023-09-Econ-527.md, one numbered line added to the Slides section; CLAUDE.md, deck table and a note on what deck 2 needs to render; PLAN.md, the second deck moved from sketched to written; PROJECT_STATE.md; .gitignore, *-tikzDictionary added.

Key results

• The frontmatter needed no adaptation. Deck 2 was already written against deck 1’s, with only the title and the three output file names different.
• Deck 2 needs more than Quarto to render. Its two figures go through a standAlone tikzDevice device, so LaTeX typesets their labels and the figure text matches the mathematics on the slides. The render calls pdflatex and pdftoppm and needs the R packages tikzDevice and png.
• tikzDevice writes a string-metrics cache, 527_02_ols_properties-tikzDictionary, into the folder it renders in. The deck now redirects it with options(tikzMetricsDictionary = file.path(tempdir(), "tikzMetrics")), and *-tikzDictionary is gitignored in both folders as well.
• Both HTML outputs pass all five checks, PDF 15 pages, no _files directory, both figures embedded as base64 in each HTML file.
• Pages build c63295e is built with no error; all three published URLs and the course page return 200.

Cross-references

• 527_02_ols_properties.qmd here and in /Users/vmarmer/Documents/teaching/Econ_527/slides/ are byte-identical as of today. That folder keeps the proof audit and the referees’ claims, which are not published here.

2026-09-15 (deck 1, the estimator in matrix form)

Summary

The slide “The estimator in matrix form” in deck 1 was cut to a single bullet at the author’s direction, and deck 1 re-rendered and pushed.

File changes

• Modified 527_01_regression_ols.qmd, the slide at line 890: deleted the second bullet (“The $\frac{1}{n}$ factors cancel”, with the boxed result) and the third (“$X^\top X$ is $k \times k$ … as it should be”); removed the $1/n$ from the second line of the remaining display; marked the dimensions under $\hat\beta$, $X^\top X$ and $X^\top Y$ with \underset, matching the matrix notation slide earlier in the deck.
• Modified PLAN.md, one paragraph added to the deck 1 status.
• Re-rendered all three outputs.

Key results

• The $1/n$ step was never needed. The two identities are $X^\top X = \sum_i X_i X_i^\top$ and $X^\top Y = \sum_i X_i Y_i$ exactly, so substituting them gives $(X^\top X)^{-1} X^\top Y$ with nothing to cancel.
• The boxed form of the result went with the deleted bullet. It is not lost from the deck: the least squares slide states it again and so does the summary.
• Both HTML outputs pass all five checks, no stray files.

2026-09-15 (deck 1, the second-moment matrix)

Summary

The first bullet of “The second-moment matrix” in deck 1 was missing the step that builds the matrix. It is now written out.

File changes

• Modified 527_01_regression_ols.qmd, the slide at line 681. The first bullet now writes $X_i$ as a column of $X_{i1}, \ldots, X_{ik}$ and $X_i^\top$ as a row of the same, multiplies them to the $k \times k$ matrix of products, and adds one line saying entry $(j,l)$ is $X_{ij} X_{il}$. The expectation is the second bullet, unchanged apart from its dimension marker. Dimensions are marked with \underset on $X_i$, $X_i^\top$ and $\E{X_i X_i^\top}$, and with a parenthetical on the written-out matrix, which is too tall to sit above an \underset label.
• Modified PLAN.md, one paragraph added to the deck 1 status.
• Re-rendered all three outputs.

Key results

• Both HTML outputs pass all five checks. The revised slide is page 11 of the PDF and the two-line aligned display fits without an overfull line.