January was.. how do I put it? Stimulating. I took part in a few activities and was utterly consumed. Finally now nothing stands between me and studies, but has it been fun. See two of my projects here.
Sensible utterance is not possible at this time, so here are some nutrition-less jokes.
Do you know that professors joke?
Yes, when they are not adding questions to assignments, or criticizing textbooks, or remarking on how they “use different approaches” or “believe in different things” than other professor, they joke. In this post, I’d like to appreciate their humour.
Asking a question in economics? Make sure you ask the right person.
Labour economics professor: “Don’t ask me I am not a financial economist. “
Financial economics professor: “Don’t ask me I am an empiricist. “
Theorist professor: “Don’t ask me I am not an econometrician. “
Econometrics professor: “Don’t ask me I don’t do time-series. “
Time-series econometrics professor: “Don’t ask me I am not a mathematician. “
Mathematician: “Why are you asking me about economics?”
*this representation is exaggerated.
I finally have something to do on Valentine’s Day. My econometrics professor knows some of us are forgotten by the world on the 14th of February, so he makes sure that we have an agenda item. How sweet!
UPDATE:
He cancelled on us. On Valentine’s Day. He postponed the assignment deadline to the day after. Who Cancels on Other People on Valentine’s Day?? It’s the worst.
Favourite economics professor in-class line:
“I am going to claim _______ but I won’t prove it.”
e.g. professor: “in general, it is often the case that a Cournot model with free entry and exit results in an excessive amount of entry. But I won’t prove it. “
In a meeting with finance staff and a professor.
Professor: “May I ask a question? Though I am aware it may be stupid ask.”
Finance staff: “There is no such thing as a stupid question.”
Professor: “That’s what I tell my students. Not true. “
let me crouch up for a bit
The prof is in the Department of Physics, by the way, for those of you UAlberta folks watching out.
Good thing about having Canadian professors? You can get reclamation. Near the elevator, at the door… They say sorry all the time, almost compulsively. Since these sorry’s are non-targeted and random in nature, you can collect them, and vindicate them one by one: each event you missed, each stressed exam night, and each harmless little trick in exam questions. I think my Math Econ professor still owes me my dressed-up Halloween.
After a while in economics, you form conceptions like “the 384 world” and “281 world” and “282 world” and “442 world”. This is because like a virtual machine, all these classes are encapsulated in their own assumptions, which can be revoked later. You also learn that they are all different from the “real world”.
You internalize these terms after a while. Then, you go out and ask strange questions. Yesterday my classmate asked a few MBA students “so in the real world, do you use math theories?” The look of concern on their faces was all too familiar.
My math economics professor can snap her fingers and come up with correctly algebraically constructed examples in but a few seconds. In class, out of nowhere, as needed. But she makes a bucketload of arithmetic errors each class. It’s a wonder, because she repeats them in the same faith next time. For example, if she found that 12 is 4 this time, then you can bet that in a similar example, it would either be 2/4 = 2 or 12 = 4 with respect to another variable.
Do you think economics professors have strange intuition?
The other day, my professor declared that the Dominant Firm Lerner Index is “super” intuitive, while waving his arms in a sort of swimming motion. It was 2 minutes after he introduced the index:
\[\text{LI}^{D} = \frac{p^* - \text{MC}^{D}}{p^*} = \frac{S^D}{\epsilon^{f}_{s}S^{f} + \epsilon}\]Dominant Firm Lerner Index
where \(p\) is price, \(\text{MC}^D\) is marginal cost of dominant firm, \(s^D\) is supply of dominant firm, \(e_{s}^{f}\) is price elasticity of supply of fringe competition, \(s^f\) is supply of fringe competition, \(\epsilon \) is market price elasticity of demand
If this is super intuitive, then the normal Lerner’s Index is super duper intuitive. Then, by transitive ordinality, the notion of price elasticity of demand is superduperquadruple intuitive.
Is my prof broken or am I broken?
. . . . . . .
More to follow……
Written by Natasha. Last edited:2019-02-09 11:25:23