Note on Code

I present more code in my slides that most accounting courses. This is intentional, but I understand that it raises questions as well.

Here is an example of a question that often comes up (I’m quoting this from an email because the question was presented so well):

Dear Dr Morris, I wanted to reach out to clarify the role of coding in our accounting course. I’ve noticed that there is a lot of coding during lectures, and I’m curious about its importance in our studies. Is it essential for us to have coding skills for this course, or is it more of a supplementary tool? How would the exams be, would they be based on coding as well? Understanding this will help me focus my efforts appropriately.

This is a topic that comes up a lot in the course materials, so I am going to link to those throughout my answer. If you’ve already looked at these materials and still have this question, then I’m happy to offer more guidance. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Data analysis tools are essential to the course

In this course, I use data analysis tools to answer the questions in the homework as well as to create graphics for the slides. Let me start by setting out the role of data analysis in the course and in management accounting.

1. Using data to inform decisions is a course objective.
2. Data management and analysis is central to the definition of managerial accounting (see the end of page 2 where I quote the textbook).
3. The Accounting Profession finds itself threatened by technological change because we, the students and teachers of accounting, have failed to adopt appropriate data analysis tools as data needs and technology have progressed. See page 3 of the pdf slides linked in 2.¹

So, my answer to the first question is that data analysis tools are essential to the course, and existentially important to careers in business or accounting. This is my opinion, but it also aligns with the vision of the Accounting Department Advisory Board. Our department chair, has articulated this vision as follows:

I would like to note that the increased emphasis of data analytics in our UG program reflects the feedback from our accounting advisory board members – the accounting education should go beyond training our students to take CPA exams and incorporate more data analytics and soft skill training. As our board members are leaders of major current and potential employers of our graduates, the department has been working hard to design our course offering to meet the changing business needs. I believe that it will do students a disservice to offer advanced managerial accounting in an “old way” without Excel or Python.

Okay, but are coding skills essential?

I take ‘coding’ in the question to refer specifically to the Python code that I have in my slides. In this sense, Python is an option rather than a supplement or a requirement (see e.g. the discussion of Python in material for Lecture 2.

The homework problems are designed to be solved with Excel or Python. Excel is a useful tool for simple data tasks, and communication with data. But Excel struggles to scale, and with more difficult analysis tasks (see e.g. the final question from the non-linear programming assignment. This is why I solve each problem in class using both tools. You will notice that a few of the problems (often at the end of an assignment) are very hard to solve in Excel, but are easy to solve in Python. This is intentional to help illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of each tool.

So, how will this be tested?

Questions of this nature are focused on setup and interpretation, rather than on calculation and code. We’ve discussed this throughout the non-linear programming lecture, where I emphasize that I’m interested the setup steps rather than the calculation itself. We will return to this topic in the lecture 6 review session.

1. If you haven’t already read the syllabus, and watched or attended the first lecture, I have posted the video on out canvas page. ↩