FAViR

General Guidelines for Authors

1. Each paper takes the form of a Sweave (Rnw) file. These Sweave files are a mixture of R and latex.
2. Paper should compile to latex (and then pdf) automatically without further user input or debugging.
3. A separate section in each paper states what input data is required. If only a small amount of data is required it can be printed in its entirety. Large amounts of data can be described and the first few lines printed.
4. Papers should accept any reasonable input. Whenever possible, bad or unexpected input data should trigger a error message that indicates the specific problem.
5. Papers should contain high-quality and well-chosen tables and graphs. How well a technique is presented can be as important as how accurate it is.

Specific Coding Guidelines

1. Use the Google R Style Guide. However, the closing brace of an "if" statement shouldn't go on its own line if followed by an else.
2. Use ggplot2 for graphing, and favir data frames for latex tables. This will allow results to be easily theme-able across papers.
3. The packages plyr and reshape are suggested for data manipulation.
4. Each function should be commented. Try to keep functions short, ideally less than 10 statements long.
5. Try to use existing packages (especially actuarial ones) instead of reinventing the wheel.
6. When in doubt, look at a previous similar paper and copy the style.