I'm a-singin' you the song, but I can't sing enough

Until now I've kept my lecturers' full names out of this blog, and during Honours, where the lecturer pool is so small, I've even suppressed their first names. Today I break that rule for the first and only time. Today I honour the special lecturers who really made a difference to me during my six years at university.

These people are from many different disciplines; I encountered each of them at very different stages of my studies; they all taught me completely different things about my disciplines, about study and about life. With some of them I never spoke a word one-on-one; others had to suffer me visiting them every other day. Each of them, during my short time in their classes, changed my life in a definite and often terrifying way. I will always remember our encounters fondly.

To Geoff Whittle, Colin Bailey, Philip Rhodes-Robinson and Chris Atkin; to Peter November, Mike Hill and Chamsy el-Ojeili; to Geoff Bertram, Viv Hall, Vladimir Petkov and Jack Robles; to John McDermott, John Randal and Pian Chen; and to Don Trow: thanks!

Just like a mattress balances on a bottle of wine

Here are my grades for the year. To work out which ones are from this half, ignore all the A+ grades except that belonging to ECON 405. The ones you're not ignoring are my second trimester grades.

I hereby award myself the Inconsistency Prize for the oddest-looking grade spread ever.

Specific comments:

• The Modelling grade is a slight disappointment. After getting an A+ in the 25% essay and having a good exam, I thought I'd get an A+ in the course too. Oh well.
• The Metrics grade is a small miracle. My midterm was so bad I would have had to get 84% in the exam to make an A on numbers alone. Maybe we've been scaled.
• The Micro grade is a relief - the exam didn't go so hot, really.
• The Macro grade is purely a result of ballsing up the exam. It's not unexpected, but that doesn't keep it from hurting. I knew what I was doing, and I still messed it all up. Dammit, fibby, when will you learn?

Now the lecturers will all get together in a big meeting to determine what "class" of Honours we should each receive. My grade point average should ensure me a First, but the Honours grading process is so arcane that there's no certainty until the results are actually out. That could be as much as a month away.

Flicker from the opposite loft

The Micro exam is in 12 hours. As usual with Micro, I'm incredibly relaxed. Notice how I haven't made any wanting posts about Micro; that's because I never had that sensation of just not wanting to read about it.

And in 14 hours, Micro will be over forever and ever. OMG... I'm going to miss Micro.

Dance beneath the diamond sky

Since the Madness of Modelling last week I've done a Metrics problem set (late, because I had to make my code MOAR AWSUM), been to the last lecture for two of my courses, and spoken to next year's prospective Honours students (I don't think they were impresed).

Today the research we've been studying in draft form in Modelling was published. Just in time for the exam!

I'm in the dreamy state of semi-depressed terror which is unique to the dying days of any major project. My university education is the biggest project I've ever undertaken, so the dreaminess is very intense. As is the terror.

On his shoulder a Siamese cat

The Modelling essay I handed in today was my last university essay ever. Barring further study, of course :-P

It was neither the best nor the worst essay I've ever written. It sort of made the point I wanted it to make, and it was long enough. Beyond that I have a record of highly inaccurate estimations of the quality of my own essays.

The Modelling lecture today was the most interesting, and also the last presented by Prof Modelling (the final class next week will be presented by a guest lecturer). We're studying stuff so new that the definitive research on it is not published yet; our study is based around a draft copy obtained by Prof Modelling. It's a genuine draft, full of errors and omissions, and occasionally the class and the Prof are united in confusion over the meaning of a section. We've managed to develop a way of moving towards mutual consensus when this happens. It's been fun.

As I've also finished the Macro problem set, the only thing I have left to worry about this week is the Metrics problem set. I shouldn't be feeling so relaxed; it's due in 36 hours. But I haven't yet handed in a Metrics problem set on time this trimester, and I'd hate to disturb the universe by starting now.

Too young, too smart, too dumb

Yes, I'm aware that it's been a while since I actually mentioned my study. This is because I've been having a terrible time, and as you know, when I'm having a terrible time I don't blog.

At the moment I'm writing a Modelling essay due Tuesday. There are two problem sets due Thursday, then a long break before the final Micro assignment... and that's it, apart from exams.

Ain't no use jiving, ain't no use jokin'

I got 77.67% 76.67% in the Metrics midterm. Sigh.

It's still an A-, so if I do better in the final exam, I will still get an A. But I am definitely not getting any prizes at the end of the year. Classmates, please stop asking me if I'm going to get any prizes, cos I'm not.

Observation: the midterm was on September 11. The final is on Friday 13 November. Logic dictates that the unluckiness of these two dates should cancel out, but I'm not so sure now.

The wine don't come to the top of your cup

The Macro class as a whole was fairly unhappy with the referee report grades. It would seem that Dr Macro has had so many visits from unhappy Macro students, she decided to post an explanation of the marking on Blackboard (rather than explain it to everyone individually, I guess). Unfortunately, the explanation doesn't do much to help matters, because it goes rather beyond the scope of your average marking guide and also points out that we all did everything wrong, and are stupid. Not in those words. But it's not really what you'd call a constructive piece of criticism.

The moment I saw Dr Macro's comments on my report I knew that fishing for more feedback would be a hopeless task, so I promptly forgot all about it. Not that her comments were useless, but it was clear that she was after a particular thing, and whatever that thing was, my essay didn't have it. No point having further discussions about it, really.

You just want to be on the side that's winning

The Economist recently published an excellent pair of articles on the future of, respectively, macroeconomics and financial economics in the aftermath of the financial crisis ("The state of economics: The other-worldly philosophers", July 16th, 2009). In the macro story, they outlined some of the various battlegrounds on which the modern macroeconomic consensus has been worked out - first Keynesian vs classical, then new-Keynesian vs neoclassical, then "freshwater" vs "saltwater". By the time the battles were over, a consensus had arisen which, they say, was destroyed by the events of the past 12 months. However, The Economist holds out hope:

Thanks to the seismic events of the past two years, the prestige of macroeconomists is low, but the potential of their subject is much greater. The furious rows that divide them are a blow to their credibility, but may prove to be a spur to creativity.

Excellent. Nothing could give me more pleasure than the prospect of entering a discipline which is in the process of rebuilding itself, particularly when that discipline has been so deeply divided in the past. If a new consensus is what we need then I and my classmates are going to be right there, striving to understand the old arguments, struggling with the new realities of the economic world, doing our best to bring one to the other and make something better from the synthesis. We'd like to think it's what we're being trained for. After all, we've all studied both new-Keynesian and neoclassical macro this year; incomplete though our understanding may be (and it must be, after barely six months on each), this roundedness can only be an asset in the strange new world of macro.

But what's this? Our new-Keynesian professors are rubbishing the neoclassical assumption of full employment. Our neoclassical lecturers are scoffing at the new-Keynesian focus on short-run welfare improvements. Each side is deliberately presenting the other's arguments as facile. The two camps are not engaging with each other. They are not accepting their own shortcomings, nor the other's strengths. They are pushing us, their semi-educated students, small units of the future of macro, to choose a side. Now. At the age of 23, before experiencing either the real or the the academic worlds, we are being required to put ourselves in intellectual boxes.

Intellectual boxes are the past of macro. Mutual understanding is the future. Vitriol, like that quoted at the start of The Economist article, is counterproductive; measured debate should be brought into the public arena. If, as The Economist suggests, we are a discipline with a credibility problem, then it's well past time for us to lay this pettiness aside.

I will not choose a side. I opt out of the battle. If I wish to believe in both full employment and imperfect capital markets, I will. Where I see strengths, I shall use them, and where I see weaknesses, I shall cast them out. This is our right as students: to be shown all sides of any debate, and allowed to draw our own conclusions. When our lecturers and mentors seek to pin us down to one side or the other of a defunct intellectual debate, they are failing in their moral duties as educators - and putting their own discipline at risk of falling into irrelevance forever.

You've got a lot of nerve

Ascent: decided the new hard drive was "a misship" and asked me to send it back. Implied that I would get a power supply if I did so.

Micro: assignment due in 3 weeks. Looks fun.

Modelling: assignment due in 12 days. Time consuming.

Metrics: problem set "due" (but not very formally) on Thursday. I need to do this to get a grip on what's happening in class.

Macro: the article for the referee report was posted this morning. It's due in 20 days. When I asked why the article couldn't be posted earlier, I was told to be grateful for having almost three weeks, because Dr Macro usually gives her students only two weeks for this assignment. I disbelieve. It's a major piece of work if it's done properly.

Dr Macro went overtime yesterday by 35 minutes without indicating that she would do so, nor apologising when she did. She keeps making remarkably stupid errors of notation. She speaks so loudly it hurts the ears. She gives no indication of the purpose of each lecture. Students groan when they mention her name.

Far from being intellectually drained, as I should be after two lectures in one day, it looks like I'm doomed to arrive home on Thursdays frustrated and fizzing with anger.

Do you take me for such a fool?

The sheer number of AC/DC fans yesterday took down both the Ticketek website and their call centre, but I got my tickets anyway, by the time-honoured method of walking to the ticket office and using my EFTPOS card. (Ticketek admit that the website issue was caused by too much traffic, but claim the phone problem was Telecom's fault. Yeah, right.)

It's a good thing I wasn't able to buy my first choice of tickets online...

... by the time I got to the ticket office in person, the Thursday show was sold out and the vastly more desirable Saturday show had been announced, so the glitch caused me to get better tickets than I would have if everything went smoothly.

Unlike the fans mentioned in the Dom Post article above, I did not get charged for the online transaction that failed, so I'm all good. Just broke.

In other news, I got a package from Ascent this morning!

Not what I asked for - I wanted a working power supply for my old drive - but a whole new drive is a nice surprise. I got out the new power supply from the box to see if it was compatible with my old drive, and immediately ran into two problems.

The small end is manifestly not compatible with the old drive. Darn, I thought, I'll have to borrow back the power supply I used for the diagnostics, and clone the contents of the old drive across to the new one. Oh well.

Then I noticed the other end of the power supply... manifestly not compatible with being in this country. And there were no adapters in the box, despite there being a set of instructions on how to change to a different adapter.

Ascent's response? "I believe New World Supermarkets have them very reasonable. Otherwise Farmers or Dick Smith?"

It's not my fucking job to go out and scour the town for a part which you failed to supply me with. It's your fucking job to get that part to me as soon as possible. Jesus, people.

Don't know how you'll spend it

Tomorrow I have to buy:

1. A 1:50,000 Topo map of the northern Marlborough Sounds
2. A new colour cartridge for the inkjet printer
3. Batteries for my laser pointer
4. A packet of Tazo Chai teabags

On Tuesday I have to buy:

1. AC/DC TICKETS

The highway is for gamblers

The good news is that my failed external backup drive was under warranty.

The bad news is that I've committed most of my current account balance to AC/DC tickets, so buying a new external drive isn't possible just now. If neoMac fails before I get a replacement backup drive, I will be very extremely unhappy.

The other good news is that neoMac is still less than a year old, so it's unlikely to fail in the next ten days. *crosses fingers*

Really nothing to turn off

It must have taken a special sort of sadism to come up with these course titles, given that the last column is for the final letter grades.

Couldn't they have called them "1" and "2" or something, instead?

Exam results should be coming out over the next week. I'm trying not to wait too hard.

While I'm posting screenshots, I may as well register my strong disapproval of Kiwibank's new online banking interface. It's not dialup-friendly:

What is more, when after several attempts we finally get enough speed on to satisfy the server, we find that this is what we've been trying so hard to load:

Would it have killed them to include the self-congratulatory promotional material on the account balances page, so as to get some actual information after all the waiting? This is the sort of situation for which the phrase "FFS" was invented.

I started out on Burgundy

Classwide reaction to the Metrics exam: "where's the rest?"

An easy question to answer. The rest is in the take-home programming question, which some have already done, and which I shall now start safe in the knowledge that my exam grade should be quite acceptable even if I do the programming all wrong.

The four questions in the exam were all either lifted straight from assignments, or very similar to assignment questions with minor modifications. It was not hard, and a person who knew what they were doing could have done it in an hour (half the exam time). Two people left around the 90-minute mark. I might have been with them if I hadn't drawn a mental blank on the first question; as it was, I stayed for the extra half hour (spending an hour in total on one quarter of the exam), and it was a good thing I did because I quite suddenly remembered the thing I'd forgotten. There was even still time to make use of it and complete the question comfortably.

No more exams! And no more Kelburn until October. Oh well.

Celebratory drink for the end of winter exams

Find your favourite enormous coffee mug. Estimate the volume. One part is one-eighth of this volume.

Put in the mug, in order:

1. One part gin
2. One part blackcurrant cordial
3. Two parts Charlie's old fashioned lemonade (or any homemade lemonade)
4. Four parts boiling water

Don't stir it, just drink it as soon as it's cool enough.

The riot squad, they're restless

Well, that's that. I'll never (unless I wind up at a grad school that has coursework) be formally taught anything more about DSGE modelling¹, nonlinear regression, general equilibrium theory, or growth economics. Two of my favourite lecturers will never lecture again. My classmates and I may never see our souls back in one piece.

1. Actually, DSGE may turn out to be the main subject matter of one course next trimester. Uncertain at this stage.

The only time he's satisfied

The Favourable Bet Theorem is a statement about the tradeoff between money and risk. It says that a rational agent will prefer some risk over total certainty if the risk offers a chance of getting a higher payoff, but only if the agent is allowed to choose how much money to sink into the risky venture. You might not bet $100,000 even at very good odds (like 10:1), but given the choice, most people would bet at least $1 at those odds.

The current Micro assignment, due Thursday morning, asks us to apply the Favourable Bet Theorem to an actual student health poster about the risky business of having sex while under the influence of alcohol.

I do not know where to go with this one. You can choose a little bit of a bet, but you just can't have a little bit of sex.

Yes, I know House of the Rising Sun is not originally Bob Dylan's, but with a song so frequently covered I reserve the right to reference whichever version I want to.

Is it something comes natural?

Ever since I got my first Mac (in 2007) I've favoured free and open-source software. This is primarily for reasons of convenience rather than ideology. The free software community tends to be pretty onto it with making their Linux/BSD software compatible with OS X, and such software is quick to download and install. No need to go to a store or mess around with license keys. It's not even about the money - I've donated money to a few projects that seem particularly worthwhile. It's just the ability to get new software in under 30 minutes and without leaving my sofa.

As a result of this laziness, all my class work is now done with some combination of OpenOffice, TeXShop and GIMP (and when I get around to learning some syntax, I'll add Sage to that list). It works pretty well. Graphics handling of any kind is superior on my Mac. There's not much Excel can do that OpenOffice Calc can't. There's nothing Word can do that TeXShop can't (although actually making this happen, of course, is a different story). And as I'm now discovering, there's nothing PowerPoint can do that LaTeX can't be made to imitate.

The trouble with this approach is that, while obtaining and installing free software is trivial, learning to use it is not. Occasionally it's necessary to make a huge leap in knowledge in quite a short time, and during this time, generally nothing else gets done. Fine when you're not relying on the new knowledge to get something done to a deadline, but...

I'm discovering the slide-creating capabilities of LaTeX 24 hours before a presentation, and boy, is it slow going. Yeah, I could use OpenOffice Impress, but somehow OpenOffice output never quite looks polished enough. Or I could abandon my vision of fancy slides with graphs, but then I'd have to do a bunch of extra math to compensate. Or I could login to a School PC and use PowerPoint with Microsoft Graph... ugh.

I feel dirty just thinking about it.

My last presentation was unsullied by proprietary software, and I'd like to keep this one the same way. But my last presentation was text-only (in LaTeX, equations count as text-only). Tomorrow's presentation calls for something more. And I don't know if generating crude plots in OpenOffice Calc and importing them to my LaTeX is quite going to do the trick.

OTOH, by virtue of my ignorance, I will be completely and totally incapable of bombarding my audience with bright, flashing, singing, dancing slides which utilise the full potential (shudder) of PowerPoint. Maybe fancy tools should always be this hard to use.

Tell me again, I forgot

After this is over, I'm going to Good as Gold on Victoria Street to see if Keeps look as good in person. Online, I like The Dorian and The Duke.

Darkness at the break of noon

I'm not sure what I spent the day doing today, but I seem to have finished the Macro assignment. Honestly, I just went back to my list of things to fix, and there was nothing else there.

But I wasn't supposed to spend today on the Macro assignment. That was meant to be finished last night. Seriously, I'm now beyond screwed, I'm... I dunno. More than screwed. Nailed?

I've also missed dinner without noticing.