How To Think

Can your teach people how to think more creatively (or effectively)?

Ed Boyden, assistant professor at MIT thinks he can:

When I applied for my faculty job at the MIT Media Lab, I had to write a teaching statement. One of the things I proposed was to teach a class called "How to Think," which would focus on how to be creative, thoughtful, and powerful in a world where problems are extremely complex, targets are continuously moving, and our brains often seem like nodes of enormous networks that constantly reconfigure. In the process of thinking about this, I composed 10 rules, which I sometimes share with students. I've listed them here, followed by some practical advice on implementation.

He's got some excellent suggestions. You can read them here.

HT: Newmark's Door.

Studies Show That 87% of All Statistics Are Made up On the Spot

Once again, Scott Adams nails it.

Exam Blogging

I'm in the midst of giving my Advanced Corporate Finance class their final. Since it's open-book/ open-notes, monitoring costs are almost zero (I just have to check for occasional peeking at others' papers).

So, in the next three hours, I get to grade my other final exam, do some reviewing for CFA, and empty out my cache of unblogged items.

All hail the open-book exam. Of course, the cost is that I can't do multiple choice or simple definitional -type questions, so it takes longer to make up an exam. But since they're seniors, they shouldn't be seeing those types of exams in any case (that doesn't meant that some of my colleagues don't give multiple choice exams, but that's another story).

Earnings Before Everything

Earnings and cash flows are two of the recurring themes in my classes (Securities analysis, corporate finance, and my student-managed fund). But, unfortunately, there are multiple "flavors" of each. For earnings (profits), there's gross, operating, and net, and for cash flows , there's free cash flow to equity (or to the firm), cash from operations, free cash flow from operations, and (for some folks), EBITDA.

Now I have a new one: "EBITDAGSAC", or "Earnings before Depreciation, Amortization, General , Sales, and Administrative, and Cost of goods sold". It's got a nice ring to it.

Or, as we used to call it, Sales (or Revenue).

HT: Long or Short Capital.

Stock Tickers Bleg

I'm working on a project with my students, and need a list of the tickers of ALL publicly traded stocks. Does anyone out there have such a list (or know who does)?

Dartmouth's 'Hostile' Environment'

Here's a great piece in today's Wall Street Journal (off the Opinionjournal.com site, so it's free).

Often it seems as though American higher education exists only to provide gag material for the outside world. The latest spectacle is an Ivy League professor threatening to sue her students because, she claims, their "anti-intellectualism" violated her civil rights.

Priya Venkatesan taught English at Dartmouth College. She maintains that some of her students were so unreceptive of "French narrative theory" that it amounted to a hostile working environment. She is also readying lawsuits against her superiors, who she says papered over the harassment, as well as a confessional exposé, which she promises will "name names."

The trauma was so intense that in March Ms. Venkatesan quit Dartmouth and decamped for Northwestern. She declined to comment for this piece, pointing instead to the multiple interviews she conducted with the campus press.

Ms. Venkatesan lectured in freshman composition, intended to introduce undergraduates to the rigors of expository argument. "My students were very bully-ish, very aggressive, and very disrespectful," she told Tyler Brace of the Dartmouth Review. "They'd argue with your ideas." This caused "subversiveness," a principle English professors usually favor.

Ms. Venkatesan's scholarly specialty is "science studies," which, as she wrote in a journal article last year, "teaches that scientific knowledge has suspect access to truth." She continues: "Scientific facts do not correspond to a natural reality but conform to a social construct."

Read the whole thing here.

I think Professor Venkatesan would like my students - they tend not to challenge ideas much (or participate in class much at all).

But seriously - this lady is destined to end up as the punchline on a bad joke. Can you imagine a professor being upset because students actually challenged his/her teachings in class? That's a perfect opportunity to get them engaged, discussing, and thinking critically. That's the stuff we work for.

I get the impression that that's not what she had in mind. I guess it's not just students who are "Snowflakes" (i.e. each special, unique in their own way, and deserving of kudos for every little accomplishment).

I'll leave it to my readers to come up with the "appropriate" responses.

Sorry - gotta go before I start ranting. Must. Drink. Coffee.

update: Mike Munger provides a nifty link to a treasure trove of info on this case from Ivygate. I really should get back to work, but this is like watching a train wreck, but with PoMo nonsence trown in as a bonus.

Another New Academic Finance Blog

I think it's good practice to mention new blogs of note -- I got some mention by established bloggers early on, and it helped a lot. So, I try pass the favor along and mention new blogs as I come across them - particularly when they're finance or academic in nature.

In this case, here's one that's both: Finance Clippings, run by Richard Warr, a finance professor at North Carolina State University.

I've read Richard's work (and enjojed it) for years, and have even crossed paths with him at conferences on a number of occasions. He seems to have both the academic chops and personal characteristics necessary to make for a good blog. Based on his first few posts, he seems to be off to a good start, and is focusing on material that he'll use in his classes.

So welcome to the Blogosphere, Richard.

Now everyone go check out his blog -- it's been added to the blogroll.