Through timely examples, we try to make our lectures more relevant to students. But connecting with students is easier said than done. For example, our lectures might reference current events, but what if students don't pay attention to current events? According to Peter Francese, founder of American Demographics Magazine, newspaper readership among young adults has dropped more than half in the last 15 years. Young people also watch less TV news than they used to. So how do you find common ground?

The Internet offers a promising tool. Online journals, or diaries, present daily snapshots of what young people think about—their worries, hopes, relationships, studies, jobs, and the other stuff in their daily lives. Now, there are tens of thousands of online diaries. As a start, find the member directory at www.diaryland.com and sample some entries. By searching through the profile of diarists, you can identify some college students to see what they write about day-to-day. For example, many complained about their summer jobs with gripes such as, "My work makes me sick. Literally;" "I feel like I'm working myself to death;" and "I've had it with work." You can learn about diarists' favorite authors (Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, and Anne Rice are the top three); favorite music (Linkin Park, Incubus, and Weezer); and favorite movies (Fight Club, The Matrix, and American Beauty). Online diarists are not necessarily representative of the population as a whole (for one thing, most are female), but their ideas may help you close the generation gap.

Another Internet development, the Weblog, offers an additional way to keep up with the zeitgeist, or culture of the times. A Weblog, or "blog" for short, is a site that usually provides the writer's daily observations along with constantly updated links to other sites, often with terse, sometimes sarcastic, commentary about the linked site. This guided tour of the Web frequently includes links to other blogs. Those who write and update the sites are called Webloggers, or "bloggers." A blog is maintained usually by only one blogger. Today, there are tens of thousands of blogs. Some are general; others deal with specific topics, such as politics or economics. (For links to some economic blogs, see the first entry of The Grapevine, and, for some economics of blogging, see the first entry of The Evidence File on the back page.)

How can you use blogs to capture the pulse of the day? You can find links to the more recently updated blogs at www.weblogs.com (the blogs monitored by this site are updated at a rate of about 300 per hour). After a major economic event, you could quickly see what, if anything, bloggers have to say about it.

Studying Out of Context

What do you tell students who ask for study tips after they botched the first exam, though they claim to have studied hard? One reason students have difficulty with exams is that questions are usually posed out of context. But students tend to study in context, following the sequential flow of their class notes and their textbook. The out-of-context problem is especially severe when it comes to diagrams. When an exam question requires knowledge of a diagram, many students have trouble figuring out which of the various diagrams covered in the material is most relevant.

As a way of studying out of context, I suggest to students that, in addition to their usual review, they prepare a flash card for each diagram they will be responsible for on the exam. On one side, they should carefully draw and label the diagram and, in a sentence or two, summarize the central point (a task instructive in itself). On the flip side, they merely title the diagram, such as "The effects of an increase in demand on price and quantity." Once they have done this for all diagrams, they should shuffle the cards and try to draw and explain each one based solely on the title prompt. Students who have done this tell me they understand the material better and improve their test scores. Studying out of context helps students answer exam questions that are out of context.

Out Of Exams!

I was passing out midterm exams in a 350-person class of economic principles when I ran out of them, ending up about 50 short. I couldn't believe it! The exam consisted mostly of multiple-choice questions printed on five sheets. The class period was only 50 minutes and the lecture hall was across campus, so there was no time to run more copies. What a mess! What would you do?

Foremost in my mind was fairness (students focus most on this too). Postponing the exam until the next meeting would be unfair to those ready to take it as scheduled. I decided to offer each student the choice of taking the exam as scheduled or taking a different exam on the same material during our next class meeting, two days later. After my announcement, some students let out a cheer and about half left. I then wrote a new exam, trying to maintain the same degree of difficulty. As it turned out, the average grade on the delayed exam was lower than on the regularly scheduled one, which one might expect based on adverse selection.

My solution was not perfect (it ate up an additional class period and let some unprepared students off the hook at the scheduled time). But I heard not a single complaint. I would welcome other solutions to the out-of-exams problem. What if you come up short on the final exam? Any suggestions for that nightmare?

My Biggest Teaching Goof

Running out of exams gets the heart racing, but my biggest goof so far as an instructor occurred on the first day of my career. First some background. As a student, the two economics departments I knew best, my undergraduate and graduate programs, required the intermediate micro course as a prerequisite for most undergraduate field courses in economics. Based on these two observations, I made the wrong assumption that such a prerequisite was standard practice, so in preparing my public finance syllabus, I selected a textbook and developed an outline that presumed knowledge of indifference curves. When I learned on the first day of class at the University of Connecticut that most students had not yet taken intermediate micro, I panicked and compounded my error by telling students to learn about indifference curves on their own. Bad move.

Later that day, my department head informed me that students had complained to the dean about my untimely prerequisite. As Chester A. Riley would have said, "What a revolting development this is." Anyway, before the next class I revised the syllabus, finding room in the schedule to teach students what they needed to know about indifference curves. That worked well, and I have taught the course that way ever since. But I learned that lesson the hard way.

Do you have a teaching goof you would be willing to share with colleagues, anonymously if you prefer? We can all learn from one another's mistakes. While we are on this negative bent, consider next some teaching no-nos described in John Nash's biography.

A Not-To-Do List

In the Spring 2002 issue of The Teaching Economist, I discussed how the movie A Beautiful Mind downplayed the influence of books and teachers on John Nash's education, at least when compared to evidence offered in the award-winning biography of the same title by Silvia Nasar (Simon & Schuster, 1998). I didn't say much about Nash's teaching because the movie had only one scene on that. But the biography offers plenty, and it reads like a not-to-do-list for teachers.

According to Nasar, Nash's teaching duties at MIT were relatively light, but he found them annoying nonetheless. In his seven years there, he minimized his preparation time by avoiding advanced courses and teaching mostly undergraduate calculus (p. 139). Because he disliked step-by-step exposition, his lectures were largely free association (p. 156). Can you imagine learning calculus that way? According to a former student, Nash "didn't care whether the students learned or not, made outrageous demands and talked about subjects that were either irrelevant or far too advanced" (p. 140).

Nash would put classic unsolved math problems on exams, such as the equivalent of Fermat's Last Theorem (p. 140), and at least one midterm was given unannounced (p. 240). He asked his students to devise ways to grade each other's work so that he wouldn't be bothered (p. 235). Better-informed students began avoiding his courses. For example, between the first and second semesters of a yearlong calculus course, enrollment dropped from about thirty students to only five (p. 140).

Nasar writes that Nash didn't like being challenged in or outside of class, and would dismiss anyone who asked him to prove an assertion (p. 146). But he and an MIT colleague "delighted in ganging up on graduate students struggling with a dissertation, dissecting a problem that some poor guy had been working on for two years and springing their own solution on him" (p. 237). At the same time, Nash could be patient with students he regarded as mathematically gifted (p. 141).

For one final take on A Beautiful Mind, see the second entry of The Grapevine.

Sleep On It

In the Fall 2001 issue of The Teaching Economist, I wrote about the challenge of trying to teach sleep-deprived students (all back issues can be found at http://www.swlearning.com/economics/mceachern/economist.html). Two studies published in July 2002 suggest that sleep helps reinforce new learning. Sara Mednick and her colleagues at Harvard examined the role of sleep in perceptual learning. Subjects were taught a task in the morning, but their performance deteriorated throughout the day. A 30-minute nap halted that slide and a one-hour nap boosted performance to its best morning levels. The researchers conclude that the deep, slow-wave sleep that occurs during even short naps allows recently learned information to be processed and prepares the mind for new learning. (See Mednick et al., "The Restorative Effects of Napping on Perceptual Deterioration," Nature Neuroscience, July 2002, pp. 677-681.)

In the second study, Matthew Walker and his collaborators at Harvard trace the effects of sleep on learning motor skills. In the morning subjects were taught to punch a sequence of keys, after which they practiced at length and were tested. When retested later that same day, their speed and accuracy had not improved. If, however, subjects were taught the task in the evening, then retested the next morning after a good night's sleep, their performance improved an average of 20%. Sleep seemed to reinforce and enhance new learning. Walker speculates that the sleep demands of new learning may help explain why babies sleep so much. (See Walker, et al., "Practice with Sleep Makes Perfect: Sleep-Dependent Motor Skill Learning," Neuron, 3 July 2002, pp. 205-211.)

Newsweek's cover story "In Search of Sleep" (15 July 2002) notes that Americans average about seven hours of sleep a night, or 90 minutes less than a century ago. The story argues that the resulting sleep debt translates into higher accident rates on the highway and on the job. Paul Samuelson once wrote, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that graduate students need at least four hours of sleep a night.

Return to Contents of Issue 23, Fall 2002

Students have difficulty appreciating the awesome power of compound interest. Now there's a Web site that breathes some life into the math. The premise of www.timetravelfund.com/ is that time travel may one day be possible. It could be prohibitively expensive at first, but, as with other new technologies, the cost could eventually come down. This Web site establishes a fund to be tapped centuries from now to finance trips in time. A small contribution from you could buy your ticket to the future. The Fund requires a $10 contribution, but the site notes that even $1, if compounded annually at 5% interest, would in 500 years grow to $39.3 billion. Centuries from now, time travelers will be paid from that fund to retrieve you and bring you back to the future. You could be brought to the future just before death, and could thus benefit from future medical technology. (The site ignores the risk of destabilizing upheaval and the effects of inflation. A real rate of return of, say, 2% would compound a one-time contribution of $1 to about $20,000 in 500 years.)

Someone in the audience at a recent Allied Social Sciences session claimed that students at his college seemed to study a total of only seven or eight hours a week for all their courses combined, and this iron law appeared invariant with assignments. If students operate with such a study-time constraint, then any move one instructor makes to save students' time (say, by putting lecture notes on the Web), will prompt students to subtract study time from that course and apply it elsewhere in the curriculum.

Two influential lawmakers and former economics professors have decided not to seek reelection to Congress this fall. Phil Gramm is retiring from the Senate and Dick Armey from the House. After three terms in the House, Gramm won his Senate seat in 1984; before that, he taught 11 years at Texas A&M. Armey was first elected in 1984, after teaching 13 years at North Texas State. Both are considered conservative, though each took a different path. According to New York Times columnist Bill Keller (1/12/02), Gramm has run against government spending in general, but built a pipeline of federal spending to Texas. Gramm once boasted, "I'm carrying so much pork, I'm beginning to get trichinosis." In contrast, Armey fought government spending even when it would benefit his own district, such as with his votes against farm aid and for closing an unneeded military base in his home district.

"If you say 'economics' to the average person, it's pretty true that their eyelids get heavy, but if you say 'money,' their eyes open up and their nostrils flare."
-Louis Rukeyser

"Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself."
-Leon Tolstoy

"Be a good listener. Your ears will never get you in trouble."
-Frank Tyger

Return to Contents of Issue 23, Spring 2002

Here are some economic bloggers. Brad DeLong of the University of California, Berkeley, writes a "Semi-Daily Journal" about economic issues at www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/. He also maintains a home page at http://econ161.berkeley.edu that includes his syllabi and his strategy for teaching a graduate macro course (he focuses on the research agenda of sixteen macroeconomists). Nouriel Roubini of New York University offers no commentary at his "Global Macroeconomic and Financial Policy Site" (http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~nroubini/asia/) but provides abundant links. James D. Miller of Smith College writes the "Conservative Economist" at http://conservativeeconomist.blogspot.com/2002_05_01_ConservativeEconomist_archive.html, but he hasn't revised it since last May. He earned a law degree from Stanford and an economics Ph.D. from Chicago. Arnold Kling, an MIT Ph.D. in economics, writes daily about the economics of information technology at www.corante.com/bottomline/, especially regulation, intellectual property, network effects, and productivity. Dr. Kling speaks from experience—he founded homefair.com in 1994, one of the first commercial Web sites, then sold it to homestore.com in 1999 (for his self-effacing account of missteps along the way, see www.arnoldkling.com/~arnoldsk/aimst2/aimst218.html). Finally, the self-described "Blog of Record for the Dismal Science" (http://econoblog.blogspot.com/) is produced by a team that includes Dr. Kling and Professor Miller, among others, but updates have been infrequent. Have you found any economic blogs to recommend?

As already noted, the Spring 2002 issue of The Teaching Economist discussed the discrepancy between the movie, A Beautiful Mind, and the biography of John Nash that inspired it. Burton Abrams, of the University of Delaware writes to say that other parts of the movie also deserve criticism. For example, Russell Crowe's Nash says in the movie "Adam Smith was wrong." In fact, Nash merely changed some of Smith's assumptions (such as a large number of players and no collusion), so Nash worked from a different model than did Smith. Since Smith's assumptions were changed, how could Smith be "wrong"? Professor Burton argues "Nash's graduate student (and future wife) solves Nash's classroom problem and brings her solution into his office. He indicates that she inserted an assumption that he had not intended (due, apparently, to the sloppy statement of the problem). Ironically, Nash exclaims that her insertion of an unintended assumption makes her answer 'ultimately, wrong.' By the same logic (or actually, lack thereof), Nash's new model, which changes assumptions, is also 'ultimately, wrong.' "

In the Fall 2001 issue, I observed that e-mail has reduced the transaction costs students face in missing exams, and has thus increased the number of make-up exams. Don Richards of Indiana State University doesn't offer make-ups. Instead he puts the weight of the missing exam on his final, which is comprehensive. He says that fairness also dictates that students can not be sure whether the final will be as difficult as the regular exam. Professor Richards says that an opportunistic student in this setting must also be a risk-taker. He doesn't think many students miss midterms intentionally to exploit his system.

Allan Sleeman of Western Washington University writes that a good candidate for "Economist as Movie Hero" is Josiah "Jed" Bartlett, the U.S. President on NBC's The West Wing. Martin Sheen as Bartlett plays a Democrat from New Hampshire who supposedly taught economics at Amherst after earning an M. Sc. and Ph.D. from the London School of Economics. Professor Sleeman says that although Bartlett's economic expertise does not come into play all that much, the show is "brilliant" and the best on TV. Incidentally, more than two centuries ago, the real-life Josiah Bartlett was a New Hampshire physician, farmer, and entrepreneur, and the first person to sign the Declaration of Independence.

Mark Thorton of Columbus State University in Georgia and the Ludwig von Mises Institute has written two interesting essays on the economics of the Star Wars movies. "Star Wars and Our Wars," examines The Attack of the Clones, and can be found at http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=948&month=44&title=Star+Wars+and+Our+Wars&id=46. He wrote about the earlier Star Wars movies at http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=277&month=11&title=+Star+Wars+Revisited&id=46. Professor Thorton says students seem to enjoy the pieces, and they stimulate class discussion.

Eric Steger of East Central University in Oklahoma uses the 9/11 terrorist attacks to discuss fixed costs, variable costs, and the shutdown point. Because people were stunned by the tragedy, many stayed home in the days and weeks following the attacks, shopping only for necessities. Retailers saw their sales drop but their fixed costs remain unchanged. Some that could no longer cover their variable costs shut down temporarily. As things returned to normal, businesses reopened. By the way, for a collection of brief essays aimed at undergraduates, see 9/11: Economic Viewpoints (South-Western, 2002).

Return to Contents of Issue 23, Fall 2002

The Evidence File

How do bloggers support themselves? A few are hosted and paid for by a larger site. For example, Mickey Kaus writes the Kausfiles, which appear in Slate (http://slate.msn.com). Some sites accept voluntary contributions through one of the online payment systems, such as PayPal and the Amazon Honors System, which takes payments of as little as $1.00 (Amazon charges the site 15% of the total contribution plus $0.15 per transaction). Some bloggers promote their own books and some sell T-shirts and other stuff with the blog's logo. Blogs with enough visitors can advertise. For example, Andrew Sullivan, a pundit and former editor of The New Republic, has banner ads on his blog www.AndrewSullivan.com. He also accepts donations and says that the 230,000 people he reaches a month have put his blog in the black (he reportedly averages $6,000 a month in contributions). Most bloggers appear to earn nothing for their effort, other than the publicity and the satisfaction from spouting off.

In 1945, at the end of World War II, the price of gasoline in the United States averaged 15 cents a gallon and milk, 62 cents a gallon. So gas was less than a quarter the price of milk. Gas now averages about $1.40, and milk $2.50, so gas costs more than half as much as milk. Compared to its 1945 price, gas now costs about nine times as much and milk about twice as much. By way of comparison, the consumer price index (1982-1984 = 100) has increased tenfold from 18 in 1945 to about 180 today. And the minimum hourly wage increased thirteen-fold from $0.40 in 1945 to $5.15 today (though it's higher in some states).

It's always heartening when other disciplines employ economics. The Journal of Economic Entomology focuses on the economic significance of insects, with titles such as "Efficacy Tests and Determination of Optimal Spray Timing Values to Control Nantucket Pine Tip Moth Infestations" and "Economic Injury Levels for Western Flower Thrips on Greenhouse Cucumbers." Tables of contents for recent years and a selection of articles can be found at http://esa.edoc.com/0022-0493/.

Finally, in the there's-no-disputing-tastes department, here are some ice-cream flavors sold in Japan: fried eggplant, horseradish, miso (soybean paste), cactus, ox tongue, chicken wings, octopus, squid, crab, shrimp, eel, and saury (a saltwater fish). Details and packaging can be found at http://mdn.mainichi.co.jp/japano/0207/ice-cream/1.html, the site for the Mainichi Daily News, the English language site of the Japanese newspaper.

 Return to Contents of Issue 23,Fall 2002