Tag: economics

I’m in class right now and we’re talking about the results of the midterm. I’d like everyone to take into account the fact that most of the people here are working adults trying to earn a graduate degree. They’re smart people. It’s an important point because the professor was… displeased with the results. It was a 60 point test and the mean was 42.4. The average score was 70%. That begs the question of whether that result is the fault of the students or the instructor.

I’m leaning toward the latter for a handful of reasons. For example, Question 5 was worth six points: “List some factors that determine the size of a business firm.” I listed seven different reasons. He did not mark any of them wrong, but he still gave me five points out of six.

But the worst reason is that the midterm followed his teaching methods. It was a test on Chapters 1-8. That was stated explicitly in the syllabus: “Mid-term examination in class, Ch. 1 – 8”. Now scroll back to last week’s entry. He was teaching us information from Chapter 15 in our third class; Question 3 was asking for information from Chapter 15. I didn’t focus on my notes from class—I studied the information we were supposed to learn from the text. Thus, more points lost.

(In case you’re wondering, I asked him outright during the review where that information was in Chapters 1-8 because I didn’t remember reading it in the text. He told me I should have known what we talked about in class. “So you tested us on something that wasn’t in Chapters 1 through 8?” Yep, he did.)

I’ve heard rumors floating around about students talking to the administration about this professor. Before now, I was kind of indifferent—he’s not very good at teaching the material, but I was managing okay. Now that it may have had a fairly significant impact on my grade, that discussion pales in comparison to a renewed urge to indulge in an ass-kicking. I’m pretty sure he won’t talk about it in class and I doubt it’s anywhere in the textbook, but it won’t be the first time I’ve improvised.

I’m kinda dreading my Economics class coming up later this evening. It’s not that the subject is boring (although it can be at times)—the problem is the instructor. I assume he has certain things he wants to discuss since there’s a slideshow covering that week’s reading assignment, but if that’s the case, I better keep doing the reading because we don’t come close to finishing the slideshow during class.

We started last week by discussing group projects. We’re all being put into groups of five or six people to write a paper and make a presentation to the class, which is no big deal. It became a big deal when the instructor asked the class, “What’s the optimal size of a group?” People were piping up with numbers like four and five; some developed a plan based on which jobs needed to be done for a project; I almost told him to use a dartboard.

No one was giving him the answer he wanted, so the discussion went on for fifteen minutes until he finally told us that you determine the optimal size of the group by weighing the costs of adding another person versus the benefits. When those numbers become equal, that’s the best size. In other words, he was asking for numbers, then gave us an economic concept as the answer.

Is five or six a good size for a group? Yes.

Is it the optimal size? Maybe.

Is there an objective way to measure costs and benefits to determine this? No.

Why didn’t he give us the answer he wanted about costs and benefits right away instead of wasting the first fifteen minutes of class last week? I don’t know, but if he was in my group, I think kicking his ass after that would have been a major benefit.