E55 - What is Git, Github, and should I use it? With Andrea Moro

In this episode we talk with Andrea Moro about Git, GitHub, and version control for researchers. Andrea is an Associate Professor of Economics at Vanderbilt University, where he specializes in labor and political economy. He also serves as Data Editor at the Review of Economic Studies. His research combines theoretical and empirical methods, with current work on jury selection and minority representation. Outside of research, Andrea creates literary concordances for Dante's Divine Comedy and James Joyce's Ulysses.

Sebastian Tello-Trillo is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Economics at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.

Alex Hollingsworth is an Associate Professor of Economics at the Ohio State University.

Henry Morris is our main editor. He is a student at the University of Virginia studying computer science and mathematics.

In this episode we discussed:

• What Git and GitHub are and why they matter for researchers
• The difference between version control and file storage (GitHub vs. Dropbox)
• How to create repositories, commit changes, and manage branches
• Resolving conflicts when collaborating on shared projects
• GitHub's integration with Overleaf for academic writing
• Andrea's work on jury selection and minority representation

📚 Resources mentioned:

• Andrea's literary concordances for Dante's Divine Comedy and James Joyce's Ulysses: litconcordance.andreamoro.net
• Book: The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte

🎮 Recommendations of the week:

• 📊 Andrea's rec: Avoid PowerPoint — read Tufte instead
• 📽️ Alex's rec: Canopy — documentaries and movies through your library subscription
• 🔬 Sebastian's rec: Elicit — AI tool for finding related literature