Video Projects for Economics

This is a great idea. I wonder if I can get the students to do a project like this?

Why Study Econ Websitee

A Great Site

This is a great site!

CPI A smart students question

If the CPI overstate inflation, how do we know we are not overcorrecting for this and end up understating inflation?
What is the number telling us about the real world when we remove the volatile part of inflation? Does that mean nobody uses energy during that time!?

How economist see Valentine day

This is an excellent audio file to illustrate how economist think. Marginal cost of a valentine card vs. the Marginal Benefit of giving the card.
Happy valentine day!

An Excellent Site by NYTimes

This is a link that I found on Math and Econ using the New York Time.

What do they Know

The NCEE has released the findings of a new poll, conducted by Harris Interactive (The Harris Poll® People), that examines adults’ and students’ current understanding of basic economic concepts.

Whimsical Streak in an Introductory Econ.

I am reading the Accidental Theorist by Krugman again. The following (original published in Slate Jan 23 1997)caught my eye and I will use it in my first lecture. Not the whole thing but the following section:

"You can not do serious economics unless you are willing to be playful. Economics is not a collection of dictums laid down by pompous authority figures. Mainly it is a menageries of thought experiments-parables, if you like-that are intended to capture the logic of economics processes in a simplified way. In the end, of course, ideas must be tested against the facts. But even to know what facts are relevant, you must play with those ideas in a hypothetical settings. "

I would have to reword this but the idea of playfulness is important for student to learn and develop critical thinking versus just memorizing various laws of economics.

Listen to this!

This is an interview with Art Kleiner. Toward the end of the interview he gets into what makes a good educator.

Diversity in Economics

Macroeconomics & Heuristics

I was reading the article "What is problem solving?" by Michael Martinez (see my last post). The Heuristic approach advocated in the paper is an interesting idea.
In the article he had the following sentence:
"All heuristics help break down a problem into pieces."
This made me think of Macroeconomics. A very big puzzle , so big that it can not be seen as one piece. Economist take pieces of information Unemployment, Inflation, Interest rate, etc. and try to reason the function, relationship between different pieces or the location of each piece in the larger picture.
I am thinking of bringing a puzzle to class and fiddle around with it so the students can visualize this idea. An old puzzle with worn out edges would be better because in real life there is NO exact fits.

Problem Solving

Surfing the Web and I ran into the above article by Dr. Michael Martinez. My mind is a little "blurry" from looking at the screen for so long but I think this article is saying what I tell my students.
Failure is your best teacher!
Screw up on the homework and you will not screw up on the exam!
I let them redo their homework till they get 100% on the homework. (most do not take advantage of this)
I never give them the correct answer.
They have to figure out where they went wrong.
I felt a bit guilty. I thought that I was being easy but now I feel great knowing that there is a method to my madness.

Winter Vacation

This winter vacation is too long. I am going crazy. This made me think about one of the assumptions of economics and I have to ask the following question:
How do we calculate the cost of working to a workholics?
How do we calculate the cost of working to workholics that like to complain about working?

Market Failure Vs. Failure of Market Outcome

This is an interesting article by David Colander.

Looking at the crowd

I was watching seminars given by various famous political gurus. These were in the lecture format given to interested graduate students at American University. Some of these lecturers were actually interesting. Watching these lectures I noticed the following:
1) Interested students do fall sleep in class. I saw a few fighting sleep and saw one doodling.
2) They wake up to ask questions. The sleepiest student was the first one to ask a question.
(sleepiest is not actual word but at this moment I can not think of a better word).

New School New Syllabi

I will teach at a new school starting on January 27. I am going through and thinking about how I should change my syllabi to fit the student body at this new school. After I finish these syllabi I will post my latest syllabi and link it here.