Status of read-the-docs/notebooks/Behavioral_example.ipynb

[martinholmer]

Since pull request #1582 was merged, the example in the Behavioral_example.ipynb notebook does not work correctly.

I'm not sure what the purpose of this notebook is because it is (as far as I can see) not mentioned anywhere in the read-the-docs documentation or anywhere else in the Tax-Calculator repository.

If we want to maintain this notebook, its logic needs to be fixed and it seems as if it should be referred to somewhere in the documentation.

Otherwise, the notebook should be deleted because if a user does stumble onto it that user will be shown an example that does not work.

I don't know how to use notebooks, so somebody who does needs to handle this issue if the decision is to fix and reference the notebook. If the decision is to delete the notebook, then I'm happy to do that.

@MattHJensen @feenberg @Amy-Xu @andersonfrailey @hdoupe @GoFroggyRun @codykallen

[andersonfrailey]

Given that the notebook is both out-dated and not referenced anywhere, I think it should be deleted. It also might be best to update the general tutorial notebook to include a behavioral reform example so that everything is in one place.

[martinholmer]

@andersonfrailey said:

Given that the notebook is both out-dated and not referenced anywhere, I think it should be deleted. It also might be best to update the general tutorial notebook to include a behavioral reform example so that everything is in one place.

That makes sense to me, but I'd like to hear from other on issue #1603.

[MattHJensen]

Given that the notebook is both out-dated and not referenced anywhere, I think it should be deleted. It also might be best to update the general tutorial notebook to include a behavioral reform example so that everything is in one place.

Makes sense to me too.

[MattHJensen]

I do wonder why our notebook tests didn't catch this though.

[codykallen]

Given that the notebook is both out-dated and not referenced anywhere, I think it should be deleted. It also might be best to update the general tutorial notebook to include a behavioral reform example so that everything is in one place.

A behavioral response example is useful for those just learning how to use Tax-Calculator. If such an example is included in the general tutorial notebook, then I don't see any reason to keep the behavioral reform notebook.

[martinholmer]

@MattHJensen asked in issue #1603:

I do wonder why our notebook tests didn't catch this though.

Because the notebook tests are very weak. They only detect a fatal Python error.
They have never done any validity checking on the answers the notebooks produce.

All I'm saying is that many of the results produced in the Behavioral_example.ipynb notebook are numerically incorrect after the merge of PR #1582. The notebook runs without a Python crash, but produces many incorrect results.

So, I'll go ahead and delete the Behavioral_example.ipynb notebook file and whoever adds a behavioral example to the 10mins notebook can also strengthen the test in test_notebooks.py.

@MattHJensen @feenberg @Amy-Xu @andersonfrailey @hdoupe @GoFroggyRun @codykallen

[martinholmer]

Issue #1603 has been resolved by the merge of #1604, but there is a remaining unresolved issue #1609.