Good Advice On Arguing (via Catallarchy)

While on vacation, I didn't spend all that much time on blogging. Mostly, I marked things I found interesting for later use. So, over the next few days, I'll be spending a bit of time emptying the cache.

Patri Friedman at Catallarchy gave some excellent advice on arguing (from some reading he's doing on Ben Franklin):

When another asserted something that I thought an error, I denied myself the pleasure of contradicting him abruptly, and of showing him immediately some absurdity in his proposition. In answering I began by observing that in certain cases or circumstances his opinion would be right, but in the present case there appeared or seemed to me some difference, etc.

Click here for the whole thing.

He's on to something, particularly in the academic world. All too often, we have a tendency to take each argument as a one-shot game. So, without humulity we try to win the current argument at all costs. Unfortunately, this is counterproductive both in the short run and in the long one.

I'm a bit of a "conference rat" (I've averaged better than two conferences a year for the last five years). I've seen a lot of work presented over the years that was seriously flawed (some of it was my own). Sad to say, but I wasn't a very good follower of Franklin's advice early in my career. As a result, some of the people I made comments or suggestions to not only didn't give the comments a fair hearing, but they also were less likely to want to share a drink with me after the presentation. While I'm not the brightest bulb in the lamp, I am teachable, so I eventually learned better (mostly due to good advice given in Franklin's style). Once I loosened up, I not only found people listening to what I had to say, I also found myself with a lot more people to hang out with, and both are good things.

One of my grad school mentors (I'll call him Dr. Jones) was notorious for the way he would ask questions/make comments during presentations at our school. Near the beginning of a presentation, at some point he would typically scratch his head and look mildly puzzled. Then he'd start out by saying something like, "I'm sure this is me, and I'm just missing something. But, it seems to me like.... Could you explain to me why...". At this point, he's ask a question that typically cut to the heart of the matter.

It was so effective (and fun to watch) because he was always polite and non-confrontational. It was kind of like seeing an academic version of Columbo (without the sloppy appearance - Jones was a very stylish dresser).

To this day, a couple of my classmates call this style of questioning "pulling a Jones". Sometimes when we're in a presentation, one of us will start scratching his/her head just to get a smile out of our friends.

Pandering vs. Warmth in The Classroom

Robert Bruner (at the U. of Virginia's Darden graduate school) has probably written more good material about teaching than any other currently active financial academic. He has another excellent (and better yet, short) one on SSRN titled 'Do you Expect Me to Pander to the Students?' The Cold Reality of Warmth in Teaching.

In it, Bruner answers a colleague who thinks that being "warm" to the students is equivalent to pandering to them. He discusses how the two things are quite different, and how being "warm" in the classroom can significantly aid in the learning process. Here's the abstract

Many instructors struggle with the role of rapport in teaching. For some, the response is a cool and distant teaching style. This essay argues that a style of appropriate warmth can promote student learning. It offers definitions, examples, and implications for the instructor.

From a purely cynical (i.e. getting better teaching evaluations without much more work) perspective, being a little warmer in the classroom helps a lot. I've found that when students think you care about them, they'll forgive you just about anything (including tough assignments, difficult tests, and high standards for grading); if they think you don't care, they'll forgive you nothing. Of course, warmth can be faked, but it's a costly signal. If you're like some of my former colleagues, it's just too hard to fake it, since they'd rather be done with the class so they can get back to their research. .

Since I'm accused of always thinking in terms of quotes, here are two to leave you with:

"The secret to success is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you've got it made" - Jean Giraudoux

"Tact is the ability to tell someone to go to hell in such a way that he looks forward to the ride" - unknown, but I'll claim it if no one wants it. .

HT to Jim Mahar at Financeprofessor.com for pointing out the article.

This Week's Carnival of Personal Finance

Monday is Carnival day. This week's Carnival of Personal Finance is up and running at Blueprint For Financial Prosperity. As usual, here are my picks for the week:

MMB’s Personal Journal has ten tips to help you boost your credit score. It's worth reading --numbers 7 & 10 were new to me, and I occasionally teach this stuff.

Ironman of Political Calculations has excerpts of a speech where Rob Arnott makes the claim that better returns may be obtained by restructuring how stock market indices are put together, titled Indexing Fundamentals. Given efficient market theory, I'm not sure I buy it, but it's thought provoking.

Searchlight Crusade has an article that explains Exclusive versus Non-Exclusive Buyer’s Agent Agreements.

JLP of AllThingsFinancial has ten tips to hep you avoid investment fraud.

As usual, browse around. People have different tastes and needs, so other pieces might also interest you.

This Week's Carnival Of The Capitalists

This week's Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Weekend Pundit. It's the usual fine job associated with the Carnival. While there are a lot of interesting posts, here are the ones that particularly tickled my fancy:

The Skeptical Optimist has an excellent diagram of how money and bonds flow into and out of the US Treasury. It's suitable for classroom use.

Patri Friedman at Catallarchy illustrates the concept of “regulatory capture”, where certain interests take control of the regulatory agency that was supposed to regulate them.

David Tufte at voluntaryXchange has been watching the share prices of the parties involved in the Unocal takeover bidding war. The prices haven't followed the usual pattern (i.e. "bidder prices drops while target price rises").

Kim Snider discusses “Where to put your safe money?”, since she feels that we won't likely see any great returns in stock or bonds for the foreseeable future.

Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture describes signs he interprets as some softening in the market.

Dan Melson explains mortgages, the providers thereof, yield spreadsheets and why we have to be careful when shopping for mortgages.

As usual, your mileage may vary. Check out the whole Carnival if you have the time.

Back In The Saddle

Just to let y'all know - I'm back from vacation (10 days at the Unknown In-Laws in Connecticut). A good time was had by all - lots of cycling along the Connecticut shoreline, good seafood, and catching up with family and colleagues in the area.

Regularly scheduled blogging will continue tomorrow. I'm eager to get back in the swing of things, and to get back to my research. I have another two weeks before classes start, but unfortunately my school has a number of "ceremonial" activities I have to go to in the next fortnight (by "ceremonial", I mean events that serve no real purpose but to make the administration feel like they're doing something useful by putting them together). For example, there's a required two-day series of talks that all faculty on campus have to attend before classes start each year. Supposedly, it helps us all get on the same page on the "critical" topic of the year (I think this year's theme is "assessment"). Unfortunately, the page it puts us on is one where we make snide comments to each other about what a colossal waste of time the whole thing is - my experience is that a half day would be enough to cover the important stuff. The rest is just filler to stretch it out to two days.

After all, a longer meeting must be better, right?

This Week's Carnival of Personal Finance

I'm a bit late to the party, but this week's Carnival of Personal Finance is up at Consumerism Commentary. Here are my picks of the week:

Jim from Blueprint for Financial Prosperity gives a great resource for figuring out which home renovations pay of (and how much) in Best Value Home Renovations.

Changing employers? You'll have to figure out how to roll over your 401k. Jonathan at MyMoneyBlog has a mulitpart series on his options for rolling over his account. In Part One, he weighs the pros and cons of sticking with Fidelity.

Jon at Smart Money Daily talks about the problems associated with investing with your emotions.

Dan Melson at Searchlight Crusade has some nice resources explaining how to qualify for a house or mortgage.

There's plenty more good stuff there - look around.

Narrow Research Can Lead To Generalized Teaching

BizDeansTalk is quickly becoming one of my favorite blog reads. It's unique in that it's run by two top B-school deans (Paul Danos of Dartmouth and Santiago Iniguez of Instituo de Impresa). In the latest installment, Danos takes on the common complaint that research-oriented faculty have a hard time generalizing in their teaching. He writes:

Sometimes we assume that our academic researchers are narrowly focused and that non-researcher teachers give a broader perspective, but I believe that it can be just the opposite. The top researchers give generalizations based on sampling of populations and/or very general principles. So, for instance, when they generalize about the effects of promotions on subsequent sales, they are not talking about one company or one person's experiences but about the class of companies under study.

Click here for the whole thing.

One of my mentors had an amazing breadth of knowledge about pretty much every sub discipline in Finance. I asked him once (over coffee) how he got that way. His response was that as an assistant professor, they made him teach a lot of different classes. Before each new prep (even though they were often undergrad courses) he'd read some of the journal articles in the discipline to make sure he was on proper footing (being a cynic, he often didn't trust the textbooks). So, he'd get an overview of whatever topic he was teachings from a rigorous perspective. Then he could boil it down for his students.

I talk a lot with business people. My experience echoes Danos' comments - most successful businessmen have a deep understanding of their specific circumstances. However, as deep as it is, it's often also very narrow. While a researcher's own interests may also be very focused, the best ones are in the habit of reading a diverse selection of journal articles that are not directly related to their specific topic. This gives them the "broad sample" exposure that makes them good teachers.

Now if only these two guys would post more often.