Classes for the last semester

Reflections on the first day.

The semester began yesterday, and I hope it lasts for a loooong time. Mostly because of the classes I am taking. Yesterday’s classes portend a fun semester of things and projects I want to do (something I haven’t really felt in the last few semesters) and that’s a good thing. There are also a lot of people in my classes I know, which makes things way better!

Class #1:

Weight Training.

Every senior should have some slacker class, or so I’m told. Well, instead I chose a class which would be fun, but also a little challenging. I’ve always wanted to lift weights properly, so when the opportunity to take a course presented itself, I latched onto it. This is my earliest class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and requires me to be warmed up and ready to lift by 9:05 AM. That’s not particularly bad, since it allows me to incorporate a varied exercise schedule which looks something like:

Sunday: 2 hrs exercise bike

Monday: 1 hr walk/elliptical/jog

Tuesday: Lifting

Wednesday: 30 minute

Thursday: Lifting

Friday: 2 hrs exercise bike

Saturday: rest

Class #2:

Quantitative Analysis of the Macroeconomy.

Suffice it to say that the instructor began the class saying: “this is the class I wish I had taken as an undergrad.” I have the syllabus in front of me right now, and here are the items that we will be covering in the course: Economic measurement (micro & macro,) Dynamic Programming, Numerical Methods, Log linearlization: Impulse Response functions/computations, applications in Endogenous labor supply, taxes, stochastic technology shocks, etc. Looks like a semester packed with a lot of interesting stuff, no? The course was designed by Ed Prescott, who won the Nobel in Econ in 2004. Pretty cool. Of course, this is all from the Minnesota school of Economics, so things must be taken with a grain of salt.

 

One of the first assignments in the course is to listen to Prescott’s Nobel lecture, which ought to be interesting. We also have a lot of group projects in this course, which means it’ll involve a lot more of making new friends and developing old friendships. I know 5 or 6 people in this class, which is pretty awesome. Need I mention, all the recommended reading for this class is available online. You know what that means? A $150 stimulus in my pocket. That’s right.

 

The required reading for this class is: The ABCs of RBCs by McCandless and George; Dynamic Economics: Quantitative Methods and Applications by Adda and Cooper; Dynamic General Equilibrium Modeling: Computational Methods and Applications by Heer and Maußner; Numerical Methods in Economics by Judd; and Applied Computational Economics and Finance by Miranda and Falcker.

Class #3:

Macroeconomic Policy.

This class is taught by Justin Barnette, whose intro macro class I took freshman year. I remember the class being kind of boring freshman year, most likely because it was really easy. This class promises to be pretty fun. It’s going to be very technical, but Justin has promised to incorporate some of the pressing topics of today into the coursework. Based on my memory from 3 years ago, I think he’ll do a quite excellent job.

The class is slated to cover the Neoclassical Growth Model, Ramsey Optimal Fiscal policy, Commodity taxation, Competitive equilibrium under taxation, optimal taxation in NGM, Capital taxes, consumption and labor taxes, Cash in advance models, Ramsey monetary policy, Cash-credit goods model, Utility functions with money, and the New Keynesian model. We also need to write a paper for this class, which I think I’m going to use as my final paper. There is no required reading for this class either, so that puts another $150 in my pocket. Awesome.

Class #4.

Computing in Biology.

This class is going to be a killer. It is taught by Chad Myers who’s a fairly young guy and seems very approachable and easy going. The class, as the name implies, focuses on the computational side of biotechnology. The goals for the course are to understand the current state of technologies/methods in genomics and proteomics, understanding the kind of analysis that can efficiently be performed algorithmically, write scripts to manipulate data and extract info, and learn some basics of programming in the process. This sounds pretty great, as it’ll give me some employable skills which I can extend to other classes as well. GOSH. Why didn’t I take this class before?!

Class #5.

Renewable Energy and the Environment:

This seems kind of like a career exploration course, but I took it because it was a lib-ed requirement. I probably should have gone with the Health informatics course or something. This one proceeded awfully slowly, and I don’t see myself being motivated enough to go to all the classes, especially since everything is going to be so easy. There are apparently tests with 120 available points but only 50 of which will be graded. I feel like I’ve done all of this before, can’t I just get out of it?!

 

Ecuador Wants to Save Its Rainforest Redux

I didn’t want to have  a prolonged thread on facebook so I thought this might be a better forum for discussion.

A few days ago there was an article in the Financial Times about an interesting proposition by the government of Ecuador. There’s some oil to be found under the Yasuni National Forest – about $7.2 Billion worth (presumably in today’s money.) What the Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa is saying is: we’ll preserve the rainforest if the world decides to give us 50% of the revenues from the oil that we would forego in the next 13 years. Unless $100 Million of it comes this year, the deal is off the table. There have been some symbolic contributions of about $2 Million, but that’s still far away from the target of 100 Mils.

As the article notes, the country is not seeking money to conserve forests, but money for forgone oil revenues, which is an interesting move. Ecuador is one of Latin America’s major oil exporters, and oil also happens to be its major export. Ecuador’s GDP in 2009 USD is $57.25 Billion. Ecuador currently has a production of about 500,000 barrels per day, and net exports of 300,000 barrels per day. It has run a current account deficit for most of its recent history. Real GDP Growth is projected to be tepid (2-3% range, which is not too much at all comparing to neighboring Peru, Chile, Brazil, etc.)

Given all of the information about, it seems that $3.6 billion in today’s dollars is a decent amount of money. The article states that the Yasuni reserves are about 20% of the country’s known reserves. Currently the oil is untapped. The analysis suggests that the oil is worth $7.2 billion, but I’m unsure of how they’re getting the number. It seems like 840 million barrels of oil being valued at $7.2 billion assumes a value of < $10/barrel, which… doesn’t seem right.

Let’s assume that tapping this field allows Ecuador to boost crude production by 20% (100,000 barrels). That means production would increase to 600,000 barrels. This wouldn’t make any appreciable dent in oil prices, IMO, since I’m sure there will be a thousand different ways to come up with a consumption gain of 100,000 barrels per day in the next year. Let’s also assume that consumption of oil goes up by 20%, so exports also go up by 20% to 360,000 barrels per day. The net gain in exports is of 20,000 barrels per day. At $100 per barrel, this represents a gain of $2 M per day, translating to about $700 M per year. 846 M barrels at 100,000 barrels per day suggests that the oil would last for about 23 years and 2 months. This means my valuation of the annual exports generated by the oil alone must be enough to wipe the current account deficit.

Am I mad or is the analysis lacking? Do companies and governments value oil in the land differently?

Why am I such a poor half-asser

The title of the post was originally going to be “Why I AM a poor half-asser” but guess what, I couldn’t half-ass enough reasons to support the titular claim. I mean, let’s be honest: I think I have plenty of “real knowledge” of things that I have encountered in classes, that I have encountered from my readings outside of classes, that I have encountered while talking to “experts,” etc. Yet, every time I make claim or try to summarize someone else’s beliefs/work, I find myself hesitating. I am not sure if I am accurately citing my facts, or if I am accurately representing someone’s position on a topic.

I find it amazing how some people are able to produce “facts” out of thin air. I mean, unless I trust someone’s authority of the subject, I’m always skeptical about these claims and I double-check to make sure people’s claims. For instance, I’ll happily accept a statement Dr. Matthes makes about Semaphorins, but no way am I going to accept a claim some random quizbowler makes about what the De-Haas van Alphven effect. This goes the other way too, though. I won’t hesititate to make some bold(ish) conclusions about how things people claim on Bloomberg TV are wrong, but I’m most likely going to pussyfoot on what exactly the Bell’s Theorem means. I’ve definitely encountered the latter topic much less frequently than the former, but I’ve taken a class on quantum mechanics, too! How then, can it come to pass that I have to spend half an hour researching about Bell’s theorem before being able to explain it?

I probably am afraid of the consequences of making an incorrect claim. Just today, I was looking up some topics for the GRE issues essay. One of the topics presented on the official website was:

“What most human beings really want to attain is not knowledge, but certainty. Gaining real knowledge requires taking risks and keeping the mind open—but most people prefer to be reassured rather than to learn the complex and often unsettling truth about anything.”

This topic is so juicy. Probably the most obvious thing I can think of for this topic is John Kenneth Galbraith’s definition of conventional wisdom. This passage summarizes exactly what this passage is talking about. I still didn’t feel comfortable citing Galbraith because I was afraid I would be misrepresenting his ideas. I’ve only read the Affluent Society once, so I’m not exactly familiar with every passage of the book.

Perhaps this is an indication that I should be more well read? Instead of spending more time on this blog or looking up youtube videos of noted Hindi song from Pukar called “Que Sera Sera,” should I be spending all my useful time reading up Galbraith and Keynes so that when I do cite them, I’m more confident about it?

Maybe I should.

Gautam

Some philosophising

Here goes.

I looked at my resume just now. It looks kind of stupid, honestly. Yeah, I’ve volunteered places. Yeah, I’ve had previous work experience. Yeah, I’ve taken some classes and can do some cool things. Honestly, though, it’s a goddamn piece of paper and I am sick of the amount of time I’m having to spend looking at it and trying to make changes that will make it infinitesmally more acceptable.

Up to now, I’ve done pretty everything from a rather detached position. It’s been pretty good historically. I’ve met people I wouldn’t have otherwise met, learnt some skills I wouldn’t have otherwise found necessary…. and that’s it. I guess it’s a good thing that I’ve been able to un-commit myself from things that I’m not particularly fond of, but there’s also the problem that I haven’t really been committing myself to things I am fond of!

There are very few activities I’ve really “enjoyed” doing so much that I’d like to commit the rest of my future in pursuit of those activities. There is quizbowl, which I was mad about for a few years, but I have tired myself out of it. The continued introduction to new and interesting personalities/scientists/historical concepts/art was what attracted me to it. Now, there is nothing exciting left about the whole deal. There was math team for a couple of years, but I knew that was just a hobby. I’ve spent time working with Do It Green, which has been fairly rewarding, but I am not sure it (or an analogue of it) is something I’d want to work with for a significant amount of time.

I envision my ideal future as one in which I participate in something new every day, every week, every month, every year of my life. Though I seem to cherish daily routines (I’ve been trying pretty hard for the last few semesters to get one set up) I only seem to enjoy things when they are novelties. In this vein, I’m sure there is no way in hell that I’ll be able to commit to a significant other. The song that probably most closely identifies my disposition towards that is:

Drunken revelry notwithstanding.

I think my only means of salvation is to love being a good student. Love classes with all my heart and learn to love pipetting/plate streaking/and other miscellaneous lab techniques. Perhaps that may involve being as disciplined as my roommate Max, if not more. Perhaps it may mean me being somewhat bored with life until I’m 28. Ultimately, here’s what I want with life: financial stability, so that I can do things without having to worry about where the next paycheck is coming from; intellectually stimulating companionship, so that I can continue to learn about various things everyday; an atmosphere of confusion-free, clutter-free expression, so that I can comment on various things I find interesting without having to worry about what future consequences might be.

By the by, this ultimately seems like an exercise in futility. To explain why, please consider this episode from the Mahabharata:

In the famous ‘Yaksha Prasna’ in the Mahabharata, the Yaksha asks Dharmaputra to answer a few questions and stipulates that if he does not give proper answers, he would be killed the same way as his other Pandava brothers were killed. One of the questions is – “What is the most astonishing thing in this world”? Dharmaputra answers :
“Seeing and knowing that people all around them are dying day in and day out before their very eyes, those that observe this phenomenon imagine that they themselves are going to live forever and go on indulging in sensuous pleasures without realizing that they are also subject to the same inevitable and inexorable death sooner or later. And, this is the most astonishing thing.”

Bolding mine. Source. To clarify, in no way am I affiliated with any Vaishnavite sect, and neither do I endorse the views expressed on that site. I just thought the example was apt.

–Gautam