Austin Frakt — On Piketty and spreadsheets

For complex analysis, what social scientists usually do instead is write analysis steps in a statistical programming language, of which there are many. Such a program is like a recipe, one anyone familiar with the language can read. It says precisely how you go from raw ingredients (the data) to final product (the answer). Moreover, one can annotate such programs with plain-language descriptions of steps, making them even easier to understand and to find and fix errors. Analysis written out this way makes plain what has been done and why. Errors are far easier to find and fix than they would be in a spreadsheet. 

But Mr. Piketty’s work is not complex and multivariate. It’s fairly simple. And for that, a spreadsheet is a reasonable choice. Moreover, because advanced training is not required to examine a spreadsheet, by working in one, and sharing it, Mr. Piketty made it possible for more people to check his work. That’s praiseworthy.

If the allegations hold up, Mr. Piketty may have made some errors in his spreadsheet. But the choice of that tool is not to blame for them. Were his work more complex, he’d likely have been better off using a statistical programming language. But it isn’t, and a spreadsheet is just fine.

The Indicental Economist
On Piketty and spreadsheets
Austin Frakt | Health Care Financing & Economics (HCFE) at the Boston VA Healthcare System, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs; the Department of Psychiatry at Boston University’s School of Medicine; Department of Health Policy and Management at Boston University’s School of Public Health, and Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Leonard Davis Institute, University of Pennsylvania