Someone Need an A$$ Whoopin?

This reminded me of my childhood. My father's "weapon of choice" was his slipper. That may sound funny, but he could really whip that thing. Different times.

I swear, one time he made that thing go around two corners.

HT: Adam Yore

Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer Promotes Bullying! (sniff, sniff)

People of my generation got used to seeing Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer at least a hal-dozen times each holiday season. It was so ubiquitous that asking someone my age "What do bumbles do" would have about an 80% chance of being answered "Bounce".

It was only a matter of time before the PC crowd got a hold of it. Special ed professor George Giuliani claims that St. Nick's behavior in cartoon is tantamount to bullying, and sends the wrong message to children watching the family favorite. In response, he's written a new book, "No More Bullies at the North Pole," which re-tells the story of the triumphant reindeer (I checked - it's not available at Amazon in case you were thinking of getting it).

"Santa has ten policies that are very unfair, and Mrs. Claus sets out to correct those policies, and what you just saw, where Rudolph is being treated very very badly, and that should never happen," Guiliani said.

Here's an interview of this guy on Fox. It's also notable because they have a response from Brad Stine, one of my favorite comedians. I'd say he does a good job of treating the good professor's idea with all the seriousness it deserves.

In case you're not aware of him, Brad Stine is best knows for his routine "Put a helmet on!" here's a clip


HT: Ace of Spades Headquarters

Ah well - enough wasting of time. Back to work. I have an exam to write, a paper to finish, and a presentation to check (my student-managed investment fund group is making their end-of-semester presentation to the fund's advisory board in two days, and this time we're doing it on-site at the offices of a major investment management firm).

update: The Unknown Daughter thought I was kidding when I told her someone had made up a story about Rudolph being bullied. She's finding out that the world is not only stranger than we imagine, but stranger than we can imagine. Then she proceeded to make fun of Professor Giuliani. That's my girl.

Finance Videos Online

As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of using pre-recorded videos as resources for my students. I've been wondering if they would be attractive to others.

I recently came across a site called MindBites - they provide a platform for the distribution of video content online. Basically, they're an iTunes-type store for instructional videos. So, I uploaded my tutorials (so far, only the first two) for the Texas Instruments BA 2+ calculator, and priced them at $0.99 each (pretty much an iTunes model). I'm curious to see if anyone buys them.

Since I'm already putting much of my core Introductory Finance Class into short videos as a resource for my students, I'll post them to the Mindbites site as well. I figure there might be someone who's willing to pay a few bucks for (as an example) a series of 5 videos (about 3 hours alltogether of lectures on Time Value (with examples for using the calculator, the formulas, and Excel spreadsheets). If not, at least I'll have them done for my classes.

In case you're interested, the videos can be found here. If you decide to download them (the site takes PayPal), leave a review.

Your Time-Wasting Moment Of The Day

Since we're at Hump Day + 1, I thought I'd post something humorous. The Unknown Daughter loves shows where someone ends up in a puddle of mud, slime, goo, or anything disgusting. So ABC's Wipeout was right up her alley. Here's a clip of their top ten:

I'll confess, I've also let her watch some episodes of Most Extreme Elimination Challenge (with the volume off because of some of the double-entendres) when the Unknown Wife wasn't around.

Based on early evidence, it's pretty likely the Unknown Toddler will als have similar tastes.

Using Screen Recording Software

After I posted my video on security market indexes, I received a number of emails and messages asking questions on how I make them. So, I thought it would make for a a good post. So think of this a a FAQ on making videos for use in the classroom (or elsewhere).

1) What software do you use?
I use Camtasia, which is made by techsmith. It costs $299, but is available to academics for $180. Many universities make it available to faculty for free off a server, so check with yours to see. You can download a fully-functional 30-day free version to get started. You also need a headset with a microphone - using the computer's built in one doesn't work very well. There are other packages that do the same thing, but most people I know that are doing this are using Camtasia.

2) How does it work? Is it complicated?
Camtasia is what is called "Screen recording software". Basically, it records whatever goes across your computer screen as it happens. So, if you're working through a PowerPoint slide deck or a spreadsheet, it records whatever goes on your screen and puts it into a video file. If you're narrating material as you go through the slide deck, it will record the narration to. Alternately, you could record the video and add a voice-over later.

You can then edit the video to put in call-outs, captions, etc... Once that's done, Camtasia will create videos in just about any format you want - flash, MOV, AVI, iPad, etc...

You can also combine snippets of different videos. For example, I will often record 5-10 minutes at a time, clean it up, and save it. I will then combine the individual snippets. This is helpful when I make an error and want to later correct it.

3) How long does it take to make one?
The most time consuming part of making a video is getting organized before you start - making sure your slides are clean, getting your comments organized, etc... (but then, that's true of any teaching). Once everything is clean and organized, I find that there's about a 2:1 to 3:1 ratio of video production time to video length. In other words, a video with a 30 minute run time might take me about an hour to 90 minutes to create. For shorter videos, the ratio is less - I find that I can usually talk for 5-19 minutes without making a gaffe, so I can usually do my shorter videos in one pass. For longer ones, I often make mistakes partway through and have to re-record some parts. Once feature that adds extra time in the production of longer videos is that I typically put in a table of contents, and doing that takes a little bit of time.

4) How do you use the videos in class?
There are a couple of ways I've used them.

• As a substitute for a lecture - When I'm away at a conference or class gets canceled due to weather, I'll put a lecture online. I've also used them this way when I get time-constrained (i.e. there's a topic near the end of the semester, and you're running out of time). So this way, I can effectively get more lecture time.
• As additional resources for the students on selected topics - there are some topics that seem to be harder for some students to grasp at first pass (e.g. in the intro class, non-constant dividend growth valuation almost always confuses some students). So, for these topics, I put up a short primer (about 15-30 minutes with a number of examples and lots of explanation). That way, when a student has trouble, the first thing I point them to is the video. For most students, this is sufficient. If it isn't, I can usually fill in the gaps pretty quickly.
• For assignments that require technical skills: This semester, I'm assigning a lot of extra-credit assignments in my investments class that involve some Excel work. Rather than spend a lot of time in class showing them (for example) how to estimate a regression, I'll put up a video that walks them through it in Excel. As an aside, once I've got a video on a topic, I can often use it in other settings. For example, I did one on data tables a year or so back. Once I had it done, I found a lot of ways students could use this in other classes (for two examples: They could see how a stock's intrinsic value changes when growth or cost of capital varies. or they could see how duration varies with coupon and maturity of a bond).
  

5) How much do the students actually use them?
I haven't done any formal studies as to how much they're used, but when I post a new video, my total hits on the video is usually 2-3 times the number of students in my class. My guess is that this means that they might view it in its entirety once and then go back a time or two to see specific subsections.

6) I'm sold. How do I get started?
First, go to Techsmith's website and download the free 30-day trial. Then watch a few of their instructional videos (they've done a great job with these, by the way). Then, get yourself a headset (mine cost about $50 from Staples. Finally, if you want more help, Dan Parks has written an excellent (and inexpensive) book titled Camtasia Studi 6: The Definitive Guide. It's for the older version (the current version is version 7), but the basics are all there.

Finally, when you make a good video, let me know (I can always use more resources).

New Video On Security Indexes

Due to severe inclement weather (ice storm), less than half of my investments class showed up on Wednesday. The topic (market indexes) seems to give some of them trouble. So, rather than either go over it again in the next class (and make those who attend have to sit through it twice) or just move on (and leave those who clearly had a reason for missing class hanging), I put together a video on the topic. Since it's done, figured I might as well share. It's not professionally done by any stretch, but it's not bad (it runs about 40 inutes, but has a table of contents that whould allow you to jump back and forth). Enjoy.

NOTE:if the video doesn't come up, try this link.

The Manslator

Here are two facts :

1. The Unknown Wife and I have somehow managed to stay married for over 20 years.
   
2. I recently took an online test for empathy and scored just above folks with Aspergers and high-functioning autistics.

How can I explain these two facts? It's simply that I married well above my station to a person who's far, far nicer than me.

Having said that, I could have used one of these - I particularly like the caveman voice - kinda fits how I feel in the morning.

HT: The Ace of Spades

Dax Locke And an Early Christmas

I was listening to the radio on the way home from my office the other day and heard the story of Dax Locke, a 13 month-old child diagnosed with terminal Leukemia. Since it was unlikely he'd make it to Christmas (it was in early autumn), his family started putting up the tree and the lights. Then the neighbors followed suit, and then the whole town.

For obvious reasons, it stuck with me. So, I tracked it down and found this YouTube video by Matthew West. Caution - it will most likely bring tears to your eyes, so be warned.



And if you're looking for a place to contribute to, this would be a good one. So open your checkbooks and spread a little cheer.

Turducken? Meh! I want a TurBacon Epic

We survived Thanksgiving with the Unknown In-Laws. The Unknown Wife, her mom, and her sisters are all good cooks, so we easily put on a couple of pounds.

Many of you have heard of the Turducken (a dish consisting of a de-boned chicken stuffed into a de-boned duck, which itself is stuffed into a de-boned turkey).

But these folks have gone several steps better - the TurBacon Epic: a 20lb pig stuffed with a 8lb turkey, a 6lb duck, a 4lb chicken, a cornish hen, a quail, bacon croissant stuffing, and 10 lbs of bacon wrapped around all the layers. It's "only 79,046 calories and roughly 6,900 grams of food coma inducing fat.

To quote Yakov Smirnoff, "What a Country!"

New Video on Risk and Return

I've posted a new video on Risk and Return - it covers the typical material presented in and introductory class from the math of risk and return (Expected returns, standard deviations, covariance and correlation) through Markowitz Portfolio Theory and the Capital Market Line through the CAPM and the Security Market Line. it has a table of contents, so you can skip around. Click on the video below to see it - it's a pretty big file, so it might take a while to load.


In case you don't want to view the whole thing at one sitting (it's a bout 90 minutes), the video is organized as follows (I reference the numbers in the Table of Contents):

1. Sections 1-13 (roughly from the beginning to 38 minutes in - the "math" risk and return (Expected Returns, Standard Deviation, Covariance, and Correlation)
2. Sections 14-25 (from minutes 38 to 75): Markowitz Portfolio Theory and the Capital Market Line
3. Sections 26-32 (Minutes 75 to the end): Systematic and Unsystematic Risk, The CAPM and the Security Market Line

I hope you find it useful. Comments (of course) are welcome.

Happy Thanksgiving

It looks like Unknown University is all but deserted the day before Thanksgiving. I finally decided to quit swimming against the tide, and canceled classes for today (I usually only get about 30% attendance on the day before Thanksgiving in the best of times, so it's no big loss).

Instead, I told the students that I'd put up a video with the lectures for the week on Risk and Return. Once it's done, I'll post a link here. I'm pretty happy with it - it runs the gamut of topics from the calculations for standard deviation, covariance, expected returns, etc... to Markowitz Portfolio Theory and the Capital Market Line to the CAPM and the Security Market Line.

Although I don't use all this material in my intro class, I expect to use it in my investments class this spring. So, this should allow me to go a bit faster and cover more material there.

Unfortunately, I have to wait another hour before the video software is done rendering the final version and I can go home. Then it's off the the Unknown In-Laws house tomorrow for turkey overload and football.

Here's wishing you all a Happy and safe Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving From the TSA

Luckily, we're not flying this Thanksgiving - we live a mere 2 hours from our families. But in case you are, here's a pretty funny clip from SNL.


Now take off you D**n shoes!

New Video on Time Value

As I mentioned before, I've been doing a bit of work with screen recording software. Previously, I'd done a 4-video series on how to use the BA 2+ calculator. Well, I'm at it again.

This semester, I'm teaching the undergraduate core finance. I plan on making a series of videos on the main topics that I can then use in upper-level courses. That way, I can eliminate the need to take valuable class time for going over prior material. Instead, if the students feel the need for a review on (for example) Effective Annual Rates, they can simply watch the video. Eventually, I hope to have a library of videos on many of the major topics we cover in the intro course.

Here's the first one - on the basics of Time Value. This one covers problems and concepts related to Present/Future Values of single lump sums. If you find it helpful, let me know.

You can see my other videos at the following site - the BUS424 folder contains a number of lectures I made for my Fixed Income class. Feel free to use and share them.

Hanging Out In Scenic Dayton

I'm here in Dayton at the R.I.S.E. forum (a very large student-focused conference on the investment world), and I'm waiting for my students to get their stuff together. Since I've been here several times, I'm skipping the lion's share of the sessions and mostly just catching up with friends.

Last night, after making the obligatory pass through the Oregon District (a very funky place, with everything from art galleries to martial arts dojos (practicing with katanas) to peep shows), I went to my room to work on class stuff - my students are getting a video presentation on MBS pass-throughs to watch while I'm gone.

In the meanwhile, since it's spring training season, I give you this classic but still funny piece (complete with a mention of a lesser-known greek figure about 2:17).

Great Video of The Unknown Baby Boy (And Some FMA Stuff)

I'm grateful that the Unknown Baby Boy has a good disposition. He laughs easily and often, and is generally a happy kid most of the time.

Here's a short clip (luckily, he gets his looks from his mother). The quality is pretty poor because I took it with my cell phone, but it give you an idea. The other kid you hear is the Unknown Daughter. Enjoy.



On a work related note, looks like one paper's already been submitted to FMA (it helps having good coauthors who do most of the work). I'm still working on the second one, and hope to be done by early evening.

Of course, that means I'll probably still be in my office at 11 pm like I was last night - Groan!

Updated 8:00 p.m.: The second paper is done and submitted. Of course, at the very end, Acrobat refused to print it (there was something wrong with the version of Acrobat on my system). Luckily a colleague of mine also didn't have a life and was working late also, and it worked on his computer.

Murphy never rests. Never.

But luckily, neithr does my colleague.

Now it's time to feed the little bugger. and tomorrow night I go on a well-deserved date with the Unknown Wife.

Since coauthors on both papers are out of pocket for a while (one just had classes start up and the other is at -I kid you not- Disney), I guess then I'll just have to work on another project that needs a revision (I'm also "data monkey" on that one).

SNL Takes a Chunk Out of Obama

Looks like SNL is finally starting to put Obama in the cross-hairs:

The funniest part (a little rude, but funny nonetheless) is about 2/3 of the way through - "Will you kiss me? I believe it is the polite thing to do when someone is doing sex to me!"

Not a good sign for the President - to this point, comics have been slow to start ragging him. Looks like the honeymoon's over.

Amazing Dance Video

A friend just sent this. They call this guy (Robert Muraine) "Mr Fantastic" after the rubber-limbed comic-book hero in the Fantastic Four. Here's a clip of his entry on "So You Think You Can Dance".

I used to have what's called hyper-mobile joints (before I got old and still) - I could easily get my elbows well past each other behind my back, do full splits, get my feet behind my head, and so on.

But this is in a whole 'nother world.

A Funny Economist

It turns our Austan Goolsbee (U of Chicago Economics prof and member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors) is a pretty funny guy.

From what I recall, I'd gotten a couple of emails from him a while back (when he was just a normal mortal) regarding possible things to blog on. Of course, that could be just the Alzheimer's talking.

Regardless, he's a pretty funny guy - decent material (not fantastic, but he IS an Economics Prof, after all) and interesting delivery.

Now that I've mention you Austin - about MY stimulus package...

Excellent Video On The Health Care Debate

I try not to post too many political things on the blog because 1) I have a mostly finance readership, and 2) It brings out the moonbats (from both sides). But sometimes you find something too good to pass up.

Recently Will Ferrell put up a video of celebrities chiming in on the health care debate. It was a masterpiece of typical Hollywood arrogance. As an aside, I often find myself upset when I hear some celebrity preaching to us normal mortals on one topic or another. Just remember - in reality, these are people whose main claim to fame is that they can convincingly read lines written by someone else (can you tell I don't care for celebrity "messages"?).

Well, here's the rejoinder to Ferrell's piece. Whichever side of the debate you fall on, you have to appreciate the level of snark that they use to lampoon the celebrities (or maybe not - but I liked it, and it's my blog).

New Excel Video

Since students in all three of my classes will need to do a data table in Excel at some point, I decided to put together a short video on 1 and 2-variable data tables.

Teaching three preps has been much more time consuming than I'd expected. Luckily, I'm almost through the most time consuming parts of my classes - in one, the most technical material comes first, and the other two (the case course and the student-managed fund) require a lot of "setup" at the beginning of the class. So, I'm hoping that crunch time will shortly be over.

In any event, here are the videos

click here for the video file in MPEG-4 format, and here if you want it in MOV format.

It takes time to make these, but it should save me a fair bit of time in the long run. For example, I won't need to spend class time on teaching my students the basics of data tables any more. They'll still have questions after viewing the video, I'm sure, but they can review it multiple times, and it'll eliminate the need to go over the basics in class.

I know one person who's put the majority of his introductory finance lectures into video files like these (he did it initially for an online course). Now he uses them as review material for upper-level students who are weak in one area or another.

Any comments on the video are welcome. It's not perfect - there are some "ummm" and "uh" moments. And yes, I've stripped out the identifying data - I finally realize what some people had said in the comments.