french_rev#

  • Series: lecture-python-intro

  • File: lectures/french_rev.md

  • Audit date: 2026-08-26

  • Corpus snapshot: a12d17c0ef

  • Categories audited: writing, math, code, figures, references, links, admonitions (JAX out of scope)

  • Overall score: 7.3 / 10

  • Priority: HIGH

Score breakdown#

Category

Score

One-line note

Writing

3/10

qe-writing-006 ×5; qe-writing-001 ×2; qe-writing-005 ×4, +5 more.

Math

10/10

no mechanical violations detected.

Code

7.5/10

qe-code-001 ×9.

JAX

out of scope

JAX rules target lecture-jax.

Figures

3/10

qe-fig-007 ×30; qe-fig-004 ×19; qe-fig-006 ×6, +3 more.

References

7.5/10

qe-ref-001 ×5.

Links

10/10

no mechanical violations detected.

Admonitions

10/10

no mechanical violations detected.

Issues#

Critical#

None found.

High severity#

  • [qe-code-001] (reviewer) — Follow PEP8 unless closer to mathematical notation. Count: 9. Lines: 103, 108, 229, 267, 433, 469, 515, 578, 647. Example: nine pd.read_excel( calls open with an argument on the first line and then indent the continuation to an arbitrary column - 8 spaces at 104-105 and 109-110, 12 at 230 and 232, 10 at 268, 20 at 434, 8 at 470, 9 at 516, 10 at 579-581, 8 at 648-650 - none of which matches the visual indent of the opening parenthesis; the call at 152-153 in the same lecture is aligned correctly, so the fix is already demonstrated in the file.

  • [qe-fig-004] — Caption formatting conventions. Count: 19. Lines: 95, 144, 221, 273, 425, 461, 507, 570, 639, 733, …. Example: Title Case caption (Spending).

  • [qe-fig-006] — Lowercase axis labels. Count: 6. Lines: 124, 1049, 1050, 1134, 1214, 1215. Example: axis label Millions of livres.

  • [qe-fig-007] — Keep figure box and spines. Count: 30. Lines: 119, 120, 164, 165, 249, 250, 295, 296, 440, 441, …. Example: spine removal.

  • [qe-fig-008] — Use lw=2 for line charts. Count: 7. Lines: 244, 585, 586, 833, 881, 932, 966. Example: plot() without lw=.

  • [qe-ref-001] — Use correct citation style. Count: 5. Lines: 39, 313, 340, 405, 981. Example: {cite} in narrative flow: ’ {cite}’.

  • [qe-writing-006] — Capitalize lecture titles properly. Count: 5. Lines: 57, 80, 342, 979, 990. Example: H2 Title Case: ‘Data Sources’ (Sources).

  • [qe-writing-008] — Remove excessive whitespace between words. Count: 89. Lines: 19, 22, 24, 30, 32, 34, 36, 43, 45, 47, …. Example: 2 spaces.

Medium severity#

  • [qe-fig-001] — Do not set figure size unless necessary. Count: 3. Lines: 70, 1039, 1194. Example: style override.

  • [qe-fig-005] — Descriptive figure names for cross-referencing. Count: 3. Lines: 1033, 1125, 1193. Example: code-cell figure without mystnb figure metadata.

  • [qe-writing-001] — Use one sentence per paragraph. Count: 2. Lines: 142, 615. Example: 2 sentences in one paragraph.

  • [qe-writing-002] (reviewer) — Keep writing clear, concise, and valuable. Count: 4. Lines: 30, 36, 563, 763. Example: the Overview’s theory list opens with a 70-word single sentence at line 30 (the whole tax-smoothing prescription, war-time debt, roll-over and post-war taxes, chained with semicolons) and a 46-word sentence at 36 (the real-bills theory plus its backing mechanism); line 563 “These led to outcomes that vary over time and that illustrate the playing out in practice of theories that guided the Revolutionaries’ monetary policy decisions” says almost nothing in 24 words; and 763-768 repeats 683-689 verbatim - the same two sentences about the three clouds of points, 80 lines apart.

  • [qe-writing-003] (reviewer) — Maintain logical flow. Count: 3. Lines: 683, 409, 976. Example: lines 683-689 interpret {numref}`fr_fig104` 50 lines before the cell that creates it at 733-738, and then the identical paragraph reappears at 763 in its right place - so the reader meets the conclusion before the evidence and again after it; line 409 restarts the narrative with “In 1789 the French Revolutionaries formed a National Assembly and set out to remake French fiscal policy”, which is where line 344 already started; and line 976 attributes the reversed regression to fr_fig104e, the figure discussed at 942, instead of fr_fig104f directly above it.

  • [qe-writing-004] — Avoid unnecessary capitalization in narrative text. Count: 1. Lines: 366. Example: mid-sentence ‘Wealth’.

  • [qe-writing-005] (reviewer) — Use bold for definitions, italic for emphasis. Count: 4. Lines: 36, 366, 368, 417. Example: the six theories listed in the Overview are bolded - tax-smoothing (28), unpleasant monetarist arithmetic (32), gold / silver standard (43), inflation-tax (47), legal restrictions / financial repression (51) - but real bills at 36 is italicised instead; The Wealth of Nations at 366 is bold for a book title, where italic is wanted; and the two explicit definitions are italic where bold is wanted, “Adam Smith defined a real bill as a paper money note that is backed by…” at 368 and “tax farming” at 417, defined on the line below.

Low severity#

  • [qe-writing-007] (reviewer) — Use visual elements to enhance understanding. Count: 1. Lines: 979. Example: the “Hyperinflation Ends” section (979-988) asserts that the government “abruptly ended the inflation” in 1797 and lists the four measures, with no figure - in a lecture where every other empirical claim is a plotted series, and where the price-level series in fr_fig9 stops at mid-1796, just short of the stabilisation the section is about.

Strengths#

  • Twelve of the thirteen figures carry mystnb: figure: metadata with a stable name, and the prose then cites them by {numref} rather than “the figure above” - fr_fig4 at 137 and 140, fr_fig2 at 180, 185, 191, 201, 210, fr_fig1 at 259, fr_fig3 at 304, fr_fig5 at 451, fr_fig11 at 502, fr_fig24 at 539, fr_fig9 and fr_fig8 at 609.

  • The three monetary regimes are each assigned a named theory at 623-625 and then each theory is tested against its own regression - real bills at 850, legal restrictions at 895, Cagan hyperinflation at 942 - so the historical narrative and the empirical section answer each other item by item.

  • The {note} at 627-633 states Cagan’s operational definition of hyperinflation (50 percent per month, ending a year clear of it) and dates the assignat episode by it, so the word carries a criterion rather than rhetoric.

  • Data provenance is fully traceable: the three source spreadsheets are linked at 59-62 and every pd.read_excel names its sheet, its column range and its row offsets, so each figure can be tied back to specific cells.

  • The three exercises go beyond replication - fr_ex1 tests the lecture’s own 1795 hyperinflation dating against Cagan’s threshold, fr_ex2 re-estimates \(\alpha\) log-linearly and compares it with the value used in cagan_ree, and fr_ex3 asks the reader to collapse the five scatter plots into one figure.