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?!

 

Why did I Ever Sign Up to be an Econ Major Part II

Back in High School, I liked Econ not only because I was good at my AP microeconomics class, but that econ just felt intuitive. It’s not like other classes were not intuitive (mechanics, for instance, was pretty intuitive) but econ somehow seemed to explain why certain behaviors I saw out in the market. I could simply parrot ‘supply and demand’ at pretty much anything and it would explain why   got cheaper over months, why the price of gas rose up, etc.

That was in 2006, when the Dow was at 14,000 something. I remember catching whispers in the air about how things were going to unfold in a couple of years, but there was nothing concrete. Back then I didn’t know of any of the blogs I currently surf, didn’t know of any of the debates that rage on in the intellectual circles/blogosphere, etc.

I took macro economics freshman year of college. In my sophomore year, I took intermediate micro and micro and was introduced to “calculus” in economics. The classes are all well and good, but I thought they were just too easy. How is it that after spending several weeks on Walrasian equilibrium people were still unable to understand what “market clearing” is? and how come people couldn’t figure out the solution to relatively trivial optimization problems?

Given the theme of my previous post, and all the thinking I’ve done over the last day or so, my belief is that many of my classmates lost track of economics once it lost the intuitive appeal.  A bunch of log-linear or Cobb-Douglas production functions provide a poor illustration of how an economy decides to allocate its productive powers, and as I discussed yesterday, it is simply not possible that you’ll find someone who knows that his utility function is the natural log function.

Mathematics is a fine tool to study economics. I’m kind of glad that people resorted to quantitative approaches, since I’d probably have been turned off if economics only involved making field observations and producing theories to describe the observations. However, by diving into the wreck of equations and optimizations without motivating them, instructors are doing a poor job of reaching out to the people who are generally confused about where these equations and things originated from anyway.

Instead of stressing on the fact that mathematics is a tool for describing some relationships in economics, stressing on making sure people setup optimization problems properly puts the mathematics front and center, leaving the economic framework defenestrated from the students’ perspective. I know this is not the case with me, but I bet there are good portion of students who pass intermediate micro and macro econ (the “gateways” into more econ) being able to solve optimization problems but not having the faintest clue of the implications of the theory that the problems are addressing.

Physics and Engineering departments, for instance, have done a great job of making sure students understand what equations mean; ask an engineer a problem about heat flow, and he’ll immediately tell you the equations he used to solve the problem and the phenomenological description of the equations. Ask people in my finance class about what the CAPM equation is telling you, and you might hardly get 10 responses, no two of which tell you the same thing and none of which are right. I can go so far as saying “It describes the idea that the risk premium associated with a security is a function of the risk premium of holding a market portfolio and a function of the covariance of the security with the market portfolio as a proportion of the variance of the market portfolio.” I hope it’s right; if not, I’ll look like an idiot, but “khuda meherban to gadha pehelvan” always applies.

People in academia these days seem to talk a lot about how models in economics need to change significantly in order to better deal with situations like the financial meltdown (c.f the Economist’s discussion on the same topic.) But nobody ever talks about how dismal the  state of undergrad econ classes are. My colleagues have specifically said that they have gone through 4 years of undergrad without learning absolutely anything beyond Econ 101 and 102. Couple this with the fact that none of the classes are taught by professors*⁺, and you get a student body that has only really seen marginal gains in any knowledge of economics and which is not prepared at all to use their background information to take a stand on particular topics.

Do academicians simply view undergrad as a filter by which the best of undergraduates will be picked out for grad school a and lucrative business jobs, and the remainder see some marginal gains in their incomes due to the possession of a degree? Why is it that during and after recessions, when the popularity of econ majors suddenly starts rising, the University of Minnesota is unable to get any of its faculty to take on some of the excess demand? Do professors just not care about undergraduates? Are they just not worth it? Like I said yesterday, I hope that is not the case, but given the pessimistic outlook you see from me, it might just be wishful thinking.

*This is not exactly true. I have had one course taught by a professor, and it was all right.
⁺I don’t mean to imply that all graduate students who teach classes are terrible. I’ve enjoyed some of the grad students I’ve had, but in general it seems as if undergrad students feel like they’re not getting their money’s worth and generally resign to the fact that instruction is going to be of a relatively lower quality compared to what one would expect of professors.

Best Links of the day 1/15/2010

1. From the LifeScientist (Australia): “Soybean genome sequenced.” Looks like it was a collaboration between Purdue, some Californian people, and ICRISAT. The genome is about 1.1 Gbp long, and has about 46 K genes. For reference, the human genome is about 3 Gbp long and has about 30K genes. This is good news, as the research will certainly help improve crop yields and allow new strains of the crop which are resistant to pests. There is also talk of developing strains which are lower in phytic acid, which could have positive implications for the phosphorus content of the wastes we have been dumping into waters.
2. From The Economist: “Bin Laden’s Legacy.”  A report by The Economist on how restrictions on travel and the image presented by the US at airports and security places has been tarnishing the country’s image on immigration and travel.
3. From Beat The Press: “Industrial Production: Don’t Get Fooled By The Weather.” Dean Baker warns that while the numbers posted by the Federal Reserve Board showed an increase in industrial production, manufacturing production has actually declined slightly. Today, when I was watching Bloomberg in the morning, I heard about how the utilities were up a lot. I was confused as to why that was good news, because the whole country was goddamn cold during December, and output going up at the utilities was only to be expected. I am glad that I was not alone in my suspicions. Still, I guess, any non-negative number is a good number.
4. From The Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences: “Faculty Profile: Michael Brenner.” I like the way this guy thinks. Figuring out what the question is has to mean winning 50% of the battle.
5. From Baseline Scenario: “Entrepreneurs and Risk.” A good article by James Kwak about entrepreneurship and the risk-taking behavior associated with it.
6. From Flowing Data: “Graphical World Progress Report.” I guess this is from yesterday, but it’s still a great thing nevertheless. Raw data can always lack the context necessary when information is being conveyed, and I think these guys did it well.
7. From Mashable: “AT&T and Verizon slash their prices in an all-out price war.” We know that this cellular telecom oligopoly had to have its internal jhagda moment given that they have all be trying to team up with each other’s partners in the hopes of one-upping each other. I hope T-Mobile also follows this model.

And, ladies and gentlemen, that’s it for today.

Au revoir.

–Gautam

Slashdot | Best Way To Teach Oneself Math?

Slashdot | Best Way To Teach Oneself Math?

Interesting Thread. Maybe I should apply some of that stuff to learn Multivariable….

See Those Fingers? Do the Math — Holden 2007 (525): 1 — ScienceNOW

See Those Fingers? Do the Math — Holden 2007 (525): 1 — ScienceNOW

 Boys with the longest ring fingers relative to their index fingers tend to excel in math, according to a new study. In girls, shorter ring fingers predict better verbal skills. The link, according to the researchers, is that testosterone levels in the womb influence both finger length and brain development.

Circle thing.

Edit: I assmue you know that those two chords are perpendicular.

AE=2 EB=6 ED=3

By pythagoras’ theorem, DB=3 sqrt 5, AD = sqrt 13. Area of Triangle ABD = 8*3*0.5 = 12

The circumcircle of ABD has a radius R = AB * BD * AD/(4* Area of ABD) = 8*3 sqrt 5 * sqrt 13/ (4*12) = sqrt (65)/2

Diameter = sqrt 65

Highlights of the few days past

#1 Winning the Tossup Only Macalester College Academic Tournament:

After pwning the prelim rounds 6-0 and beating Tonka and Orono in the playoffs, we were to play Eden Prairie B, who had pwned St. Thomas (apparently it was all Igor in that round). So, we were sure that Eden Prairie would win no matter what :-p.

Midnight won the round 415-240 and that was probably the best competition of the day. EP 2 did pretty well too. I’m very happy that we won the first and second place trophies. That was a much needed win.

#2 14 on the Math Team Events today

This is my first 14 ever! I’m so happy. Event C was easy #3 was particularly easy, and wonder how people didn’t get 1 for it. Event D was not bad either… I couldn’t solve number 4 initially, and it was only after I realised that if x and the base are both raised to the same power, the new logarithm is equal to the old one (duh….)

Hope tomorrow’s knowledge bowl meet goes well…

Gautam