IPA Data Science, Engineering, and Technology Handbook

About the Handbook

Welcome to IPA’s Handbook for Data Science, Engineering, and Technology!

This handbook is intended as a living document to assist IPA staff and collaborators with common practices for writing code and working with data. The handbook will never be comprehensive of every possible software, data object, or shared practice. However, IPA staff working with data and technology are encouraged to use this handbook as a reference and a shared project to give tips and advice for working collaboratively with data analysis and software development.

Getting Started

To get started with software covered in this handbook, read Computer Setup to learn how to set up your computer for data analysis and software development.

Contributing

For instructions on how to contribute to this handbook, see Contributing to the Handbook.

Also, see the Code Review guide for information on how to conduct code reviews.

Using Software Tools

For information about specific software, see the respective pages under the Software directory.

Here are some specific software that this guide covers:

• Git
• Github
• VS Code
• Quarto
• Python
• and more!

Acknowledgements

This handbook is a collaboration between multiple IPA Teams including Data Science and Engineering (DSE), Management and Information Systems Team (MIST), Global Research and Data Support, and Poverty Probability Index (PPI®).

The handbook is inspired by the Gitlab Data Team Handbook.