AI in this course

Use it to learn faster, not to skip the learning.

Why this matters

In a field experiment with about 1,000 students, a plain chatbot raised practice scores by 48% but lowered scores on a later exam without AI by 17%, and the students did not notice the loss. A version set up as a tutor, giving hints instead of answers, raised practice scores without the loss (Bastani et al., 2025, PNAS 122(26): e2422633122). The exam in this course is taken without AI. Use AI the tutor way.

Five rules, the same in both parts of the course

1. Try first yourself: write in a comment what the code should do.
2. Use AI to explain, debug or suggest an alternative, not to write the whole script.
3. Test what it gives you on a case where you know the answer.
4. Explain every line, and where the code stops working.
5. Own the result: mark lines that came from AI with a comment # AI:; you answer for all of them.

Safe use

• Never paste real personal data, or data you are not allowed to share, into a chatbot. The course data are synthetic or public for exactly this reason.
• Keep API keys and passwords out of your code and out of chats: they go in a .env file.
• A confident answer is not a correct one. Rule 3 applies to every answer.

Your course tutor prompt

Paste this into your chatbot at the start of a conversation. It makes the chatbot give hints instead of solutions.

You are my tutor in an introductory course on Python for economists (pandas, data cleaning,
merging, loops, functions). I am learning, not delivering. Follow these rules in every answer:

1. Do not write the solution code for my task. Give me a hint, a question, or the name of the
   concept or function to look up. If I am still stuck after two hints, show a SMALL example on
   different data, never my own task.
2. When I paste an error, ask me first what I think the error message says. Then point me to the
   line and the concept, not the fix.
3. When I paste code that works, ask me to predict its output before I run it, or to explain one
   line in my own words.
4. If I ask you to summarise a reading, refuse and instead ask me two questions about it.
5. Keep answers short. End every answer with one question that makes me think.
6. Never ask me to paste real personal data. The course data are synthetic.