Your feedback for new documentation - thanks!

[tommaso.mancini]

Hi,
My name is Tommaso Mancini, I'm doing a postdoc at PSE/ CEPREMAP in Paris and helping Michel on Dynare, specifically to write new documentation for the program we have come to appreciate so much!

To help guide my work, I'd like to turn to you - our users - for your feedback on the current documenation and your approach to learning Dynare. If you could take 1 - 2 minutes to answer some of the questions below, I'd really appreciate it. Thanks very much in advance.

1) The current documentation/support includes:
(i) an online Manual,
(ii) a Practical Guide leading you through a specific example,
(iii) examples of code (under Main Menu\Examples),
(iv) forum/ newsgroups.

2) Which did you find necessary/sufficient to learn Dynare?

3) Which did you find most/ least helpful?

4) How do you primarly use documentation?
a) I read the doc from A to Z and redo each example
b) I read the basics to get started then play with the program and figure things out on my own
c) I try to get to work immediately, while keeping an eye on the reference manual
d) I don't use documentation, I just look at an example and reverse engineer. If in trouble, I just ask my questions on the forum.
e) Other - please specify

5) When learning Dynare, which area did you find most problematic?
a) installing
b) learning the basic commands
c) interpreting output
d) understanding what ia going on behind the scenes (computationally)
e) other (please specify)

6) What is the most helpful way to communicate instructions: the Manual is command based (intended more as a reference), while the Practical Guide is example based. One idea for the new documentation is to write everything based on examples. Would this be helpful?

7) Is there something that was clearly missing from the current set of documetation and that would have been especially helpful to learn Dynare?

8) Some quick info about yourself:

a) Do you mainly use Dynare for (a) simulations or (b) estimations?

b) Is Dynare your main tool to deal with DSGE models? If not what else do you use?

c) Do you consider yourself a (a) power user, (b) regular user, (c) occasional user of basic functionality?

9) Anything else that comes to your mind regarding documentation?

Thanks again very much for your precious feedback! Best regards,
- Tommaso

[mauriceroche]

1) The current documentation/support includes:
(i) an online Manual,
(ii) a Practical Guide leading you through a specific example,
(iii) examples of code (under Main Menu\Examples),
(iv) forum/ newsgroups.

2) Which did you find necessary/sufficient to learn Dynare?

(iii)

3) Which did you find most/ least helpful?
(iii) and (iv) are very helpful
nothing is least helpful


4) How do you primarly use documentation?
a) I read the doc from A to Z and redo each example
b) I read the basics to get started then play with the program and figure things out on my own
c) I try to get to work immediately, while keeping an eye on the reference manual
d) I don't use documentation, I just look at an example and reverse engineer. If in trouble, I just ask my questions on the forum.
e) Other - please specify

(c) and (d)

5) When learning Dynare, which area did you find most problematic?
a) installing
b) learning the basic commands
c) interpreting output
d) understanding what ia going on behind the scenes (computationally)
e) other (please specify)

(e) adapting the program to my needs......but that is my problem.

6) What is the most helpful way to communicate instructions: the Manual is command based (intended more as a reference), while the Practical Guide is example based. One idea for the new documentation is to write everything based on examples. Would this be helpful?
Yes. The more examples the better including mxing I(0) and I(1) forcing processes.

7) Is there something that was clearly missing from the current set of documetation and that would have been especially helpful to learn Dynare?
A brief description about what each file does and error descriptions.

Some quick info about yourself:

a) Do you mainly use Dynare for (a) simulations or (b) estimations?
(a)

b) Is Dynare your main tool to deal with DSGE models? If not what else do you use?
Uhligs Toolkit

c) Do you consider yourself a (a) power user, (b) regular user, (c) occasional user of basic functionality?

(b)

9) Anything else that comes to your mind regarding documentation?