We Really Need Extra Credit (oh wait, we don't)

Every semester, I get a handful of students who come up to me and say something like "UP, is there anything I can do for extra credit? I reeeeeaaaaalllly need to pass this class". So this time, I thought I'd let students self-select up front instead of whining ex post.

I have about a 6-7 extra credit assignments for my investments class. I parcel them out one by one, with a deadline for each. Most will involve some kind of Excel assignment that will drive home a class topic, and will take an hour or so. If they complete an assignment by the deadline, they get one or more points added to the next exam.

I mostly have juniors in my investments class. They should currently be in the midst of applying for internships. Since they can't apply without a resume, I thought that giving them a point on the exam for simply having a resume review done by our college career services person was pretty much a no-brainer.

The end result - only three out of 21 students had the resume review done and got the points. And of course, they were my top three students.

Ah well. At least this makes it pretty easy to answer the students who darken my door in the last week of the semester looking for extra credit.

As usual, The Far Side has something that's on point.

Getting Ready To Start Classes

I'm still in the midst of hurriedly putting a paper together for the FMA deadline (Friday). So, it's pretty much been reading articles, writing, reading, writing, rewriting, rewriting, etc...

But during my breaks, I try to put a bit of time in on my next semester's classes. I'm teaching Investments again after a couple of years' break, so I'm redoing my syllabus (it['s a new edition of the text, too).

When this happens, my thoughts invariable turn to teaching (not just WHAT to teach, but HOW and WHY). Here's some good advice on the HOW: don't use Dilbert's approach to answering students' questions:


That is, unless you're tenured and don't care about evaluations. Of course, if you're tenured, you might often feel the need to use to respond to many of your colleagues. At least, that seems how it works in a few cases I've seen.

Ah well - I'm done with my workout and time to get to work (and it's not even 6:30 yet). Somehow, I've become a morning person over the last few months - The Unknown Wife works out at the Y from 6-7 with a friend (the friend has time constraints. So, if I'm going to get mine in , I have to be at the Y by 5 when it opens. This means getting up at 4:30 - I know at least one of my readers (Gerry) would approve.

Irony

I regularly get together with a couple of guys from my church. We've been going over a book titled "Twelve Steps for Recovering Pharisees". It's main theme is that we are pretty much all hard-wired to find ways be judgmental twerps who try to make ourselves feel superior to those around us. So this cartoon from XKCD hit the spot.

Scott Adams Must Be Eavesdropping on My Email

This sounds like a couple of my students. For some reason, family deaths always seem to increase around exam time.

Occam's Razor vs. Occam's Professor

I try not to be Occam's Professor - unless it's the right thing to do.

Nash Meets Feynman

Those of you who haven't seen "A Beautiful Mind" might not get it. Butif you have (or if you know Nash's work), it's funny.

In case you didn't know, in addition to Richard Feynman being a Nobel-prize winning physicist, also found the Feynman-Kac solution to the third-order partial differential solution that Black and Scholes used in their option-pricing formula. So, he's actually about a Nobel-Prize winner and maybe a quarter (once on his own, and once for being useful to B&S.

Data Analysis With Stata

The Unknown Family went to the Unknown Sister-in-Law's family's house in an adjacent state (their youngest daughter is going off to college, and Unknown Wife wanted to see her before she leaves for the Big Adventure). So, I got a couple of days to myself. Nothing very exciting - I've been grinding data during the day, and went on a couple of longish bike rides (I'm up to 25-30 miles at a time at what for me is a pretty good clip).

On the data analysis front, I finally took the plunge and started using Stata. It's a pretty amazing package of tools. I work with a lot of large and complicated data sets, and there's always a lot of data manipulation before I get to the point where I'm running statistical analyses. When it comes to moving data around (merging data, sub-setting, mean adjusting, etc...) SAS wins hands down. And I've put a lot of time getting my SAS chops, so I'd put off learning Stata for a long time.

But I now understand what so many of my friends have been telling me for so long - once you get to the point that your data is all nice and neat, Stata rocks. I was able to do many permutations of regression models (fixed effects, random effects, robust and/or clustered errors, etc...) in about a quarter of the time it would take in SAS. And while it's possible to work in batch mode by writing "do" files, you can do quick and dirty analyses with drop down menus.

I have seen the statistical light, and it reveals that I'll be doing a lot more with Stata in the future.

Dilbert On Mutual Funds

Nuff said.

High Impact Research

Most of what I do is not "high impact." Ah well- I yam what I yam.

How To Dress, How To Dress...

Since I pretty much wear khakis and button down shirts every day (and khakis and polo shorts when it gets warm, this made me chuckle

From PhDComics.

What To Call Your Professor

At the Unknown Alma Mater, some of the faculty preferred that students address them by their first name. With others, it was "Dr. So and So" until they graduated. At my current school, american PhD students go by first names, and international students go by "Dr. ___" (at least, until I can break them of the habit).

For students looking for some guidance on the issue, PhD Comics provides a handy flow chart. Enjoy.

This Is Pretty Much True For Most First Drafts

This is true for my first drafts, and even more so for most grad students.

Sad, but true.

If Dogbert Was a Bailed Out CEO

Some of the political theater surrounding the auto bailouts was pretty ridiculous. In particular, the kerfuffle about them taking corporate jets vs. driving vs. flying coach was a bit much.

So I thought this Dilbert cartoon was pretty good:

This Reminds Me Of My Past Life

Before becoming an academic, I worked a succession of jobs that didn't suit me, including selling financial services (insurance, mutual funds, etc...), being a headhunter (the executive placement type, not the shrunken head type), and working as an orderly in a locked inpatient adolescent psychiatric ward (which was probably the best possible preparation for working in academia).

But my least favorite job was being a tax collector for the state. I spent my days calling people up and threatening them with dire things if they didn't pay the sales tax they'd collected. So this Dilbert cartoon really hit home:



I think I'll keep this one above my desk to set me straight whenever I start griping about how hard my day is.

Be Careful Who You Delegate To

As usual, Scott Adams nails it. Rule # 1 should be "be careful who you delegate to".

Rule #2 should be "Don't tick off your secretary (or anyone else's)".

Serious Nerd Humor

If you're a stats nerd, you might find this amusing. If not, just move along.

For more of the same, go to XKCD.

When Diversification Doesn't Work

I'm not sure, but I think it has something to do with correlation...

We've Had Some Budget Cuts

Yes, like most state schools, Unknown University had had some budget cuts - about 10% so far from the original budget. So these three strips by Scott Adams were pretty funny. A bit close to home, but funny.

I've Had Deans Like Catbert

Professor Time vs. Grad Student Time

That reminds me - I have to check up on my grad assistant to see how he's doing on the assignment I gave him at the beginning of the semester.