DRY stands for “Don’t repeat yourself” and is one of the main principles of efficient programming. In Gams, I use some checks over and over again. Instead of rewriting the code or searching for a file with the existing code and copying it, I use macros in Gams. Macros aren’t difficult to write. You can find more on them here in the documentation.
Here is a simple example from the Gams documentation defining and using a macro that calculates the reciprocal of a number:
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In my previous post, I showed an easy way to aggregate a matrix using mappings in GAMS. If you use a small mapping, you probably won’t make any errors, but if the sets in the mappings have many elements, the chance of an error rises. For example, you forget to map one of the elements on either side, or you map one element twice.
Tom Rutherford wrote a nice piece of code to check your mappings. This code raises an error as soon as you make one of the mistakes mentioned above.
Let us first set up a simple … Read the rest “Checking Mappings in GAMS”
Gams makes aggregating tables quite easy. Imagine you a table with data for 100 sectors but you want to run your model in the testing phase for an aggregation of these sectors (e.g. an aggregate the 100 sectors to the three sector groups “agriculture”, “industry”, and “services”). This is a typical situation in CGE (computable general equilibrium modeling): you have a social accounting matrix for your country and you want to start with a simple model having only a few sectors, one household, no taxes, and no government).
In Gams you simply introduce a mapping that maps the 100 sectors … Read the rest “Aggregating tables in Gams in a flexible way using mappings and compile-time variables”
After some hesitation, I finally decided to start with learning Python. I had some hesitations because I am used to R and that is a different kind of cookie. The decision was made easier because I am working on a project with models developed by other colleagues in Python (and Matlab). Furthermore, although Shiny in R is a great way for visualization of results, I got stuck building a combination of results and information. Python offers Dash (some nice examples can be found in the Dash Galley). Another reason is that nowadays you can use Python in your Gams … Read the rest “Good Books for Learning Python”
