Questions about administrative stuff for Econ 102, Section 100, Winter 2005: Apr 28: > I am in a very tight situation currently. I understand that this is > relatively late in the semester, but I sincerely need your help. I was > accepted to the Ross School of Business to start this fall semester. > However, this admission is contingent upon my completion of Econ 102 with > a grade of C or better. After today's exam, I > am not sure if I got a good enough grade to move my average in the class > to a C. > > Professor, with all seriousness and humility, I ask you, if there is > absolutely anything that I can do to move my grade up to at least a C, I > beg that you allow me to complete it. I know that this is a stretch, but > I have worked so hard to get admitted to the business school and would be > devastated to lose it now. I sincerely need anything you can do to help > boost my grade at this point. Be it a report or anything else that I can > do, I beg that you please allow me to do it. I suppose it doesn't hurt to ask, but I'm sure you realize that grades must be given on the same basis to all students, and not adjusted because of a particular student's request. So no, I can't change your grade, whatever it turns out to be, based on this. I presume that the business school has a reason for its requirements, but if you want an exception to be made, it should be there, not here. But perhaps they have learned that students who cannot meet their requirements go on to do poorly in their program. If so, you may be fortunate that this requirement will prevent you from getting in over your head. Apr 28: > I felt as though I studied a lot for the exam and have kept up with the > course for the semester as best I can but I am afraid that I will not be > able to get a C in the course. Because econ is my major, if I don't get a > C I have to retake the course and I won't graduate on time which is > essential if I am to begin my masters. In any event, I was wondering if > there is ANYTHING I can do to help my grade out? I have worked very hard > in this class and really hope there is something I can do. Thank you for > any help you can give me. No, I'm sorry, but I can't do anything. It would not be right to offer you any opportunity that I don't offer to all students, and I'm not about to do that. What you should perhaps realize, though, is that if you had this much trouble with Econ 102, then you would only be asking for more trouble by becoming an Econ major. In a way, you are fortunate to learn that, before it is too late to pick another major. Apr 26: > What articles in the Coursepack were deleted from the syllabus? Actually, I'm not sure. But I think it was the articles by Griswold and Scott that were assigned for March 8. Apr 26: > Ok here is the deal. I am taking the class pass fail and im roughly around a > C-/D+ in the course right now. My section grade is fine. I turned in all of > my > homework and achieved decent on all of the quizes. But with a 63 on the first > exam and a 52 on the second, do you have an idea of what I would have to get > on > the final in order to just get a P out of the class? Nope, no idea. I only turn in letter grades; someone else translates them into pass or fail, and I don't know what grade is regarded as passing. Even if I did, we grade on a curve, so I can't know what score you would need, since that depends on how well others do. My suggestion would be that you try to get the highest grade you can, rather than shooting for the minimum. But I realize that is less exciting. Mar 23: > Could you please give me advice on how to do better in this class? I do > my homework faithfully and study the material consistently but it just > seems that I can't seem to think like an 'economist'. I've written down all the suggestions that I could think of, in the Study Tips that are posted online under Useful Links. Beyond that I don't know what to suggest except perhaps to spend more time in office hours trying to get explanations of the things you don't understand. Mar 22: > Will lecture on Thursday be at all affected by the GEO walkout? No, it will not be affected. We'll have lecture as usual. Mar 18: > I thought the question about social security was > controversial. I vaguely remember us talking about it randomly in class > one day, but it was not in the book or in any of the assigned articles to > my recollection. There were six articles you had us study for the exam, > and when you use a topic that wasnt in any of these or a focus in > lecture, i find the question definietly unfair. I think I disagree that I shouldn't ever examine you on anything I've done in lecture that was not in one of the assigned readings. That seems to make the lectures irrelevant. But as it happens I didn't do that here. The question on social security comes from the WSJ article that I assigned for the week of Feb 8-14, for which I told you to be able to answer the following questions: "Is it currently growing or shrinking? Why? What is expected to happen to it in the future, if policies are not changed? Why?" Mar 16: > For exam 2 could there be questions on: > Bureau of Labor Statistics on unemployment > or Meltzer on outsourcing? > or were those considered exam 1 articles Both of these are eligible to be on this second exam. They were not covered on the first one. > If they could be on there, can you send me the username and password to > access the articles online because the Meltzer article in the coursepack > cuts off the right edge. You don't need any username or password for these articles. They are publicly available. Mar 15: > I was just wondering if you could post the answers to your website for > homework #6. Also, you might want to check the answer posted for > question #6 on homework #5 as it appears to be incorrect to me. Thanks for the reminder, and for pointing out the error in hw 5. I think I've got it right, now. Mar 14: > I know for the first exam, there were no questions on Chapter 15, > will there be on this exam? There could be questions about the long-run aggregate supply curve. Mar 13: > Are you at liberty to say how much of the second midterm will > reflect the new material, and how much of it will reflect the old > material (stuff covered in the first midterm) ??? > > Will it be 50-50, or will there be a greater emphasis on the new material > than the old one ??? ( 80% new , 20% old ). Looks to me like it is about 60% new, 40% old. Does that help? Mar 11: > I am in Friday section, so the homework is due Friday. > But, the students who are in Monday section can hand in their homework on > Monday next week. > I think this situation is kinda unfair since Monday section students > have a whole weekend - Friday, Satruday, and Sunday. > They definitely have more time to do homework than us. > Their homework should be due Saturday or something. > I think we have to improve this inequility. > Thank you. I agree, but as inequities go, it's a small one. I was not happy when I saw that the department had scheduled the sections as they did, but there was nothing I could do about it. You, at least, will have the weekend to enjoy, or perhaps to study for the exam. Mar 10: > I just was studying for the exam and noticed that it is a cumulative > exam. I was wondering how cumulative it is. Will be responsible to know > material from hand outs, WSJ assignments, and online reading from before > the first exam? Also how much will previous information be covered on > this exam? The exam will cover web readings and WSJ articles only from after what was covered on the first exam. Handouts are basically part of the lectures, so all of those are covered. I don't know yet what the proportions will be of old and new material. Mar 8: > I noticed the second exam next thursday is cumulative through chapter 15. > I was wondering if you also expect us to know ALL previous assigned > readings, the ones in the coursepack and wall street journal assignments > that were material for the first exam. I hadn't really though about that, but no, I guess I'll take any questions about coursepack readings and WSJ only from material since the first midterm. Feb 27: > I am a student from your ECON102 class. > I am now working on homework 5. So many problems in it! However, it seems > that problem 8 is missing. I wonder whether it is just a mislabel or > there is a problem 8 somewhere but not typed into the assignment file. I > hope it's the former case. Thanks! Just a mislabel. There is no problem 8. Feb 16: > Hi, Professor Deardorff, I have a question about the exam score. Isn't > the total score for the short answers 20 pts? How come some people got 22 > pts for the short answers? I thought the 2 pts come from the proper > placement of the name. I wrote my name on the exam but why don't I get > these 2 pts? I included the 2 points (for giving the information) in with the scores for the short answer part. So someone who got 22 points got 20 on the short answer and 2 for the information. If you have less than 20, then you can't tell from the scores I posted whether you lost points for not putting the information or lost points on the short answer. I actually don't have that information, which I presume is on the exam itself, as you'll see when you get it back. If you didn't get the 2 points, it may be that you did include your name but did not include your form number on the scantron. That seems to be the most common reason for losing these points, apparently, though I don't know why students don't do it. And it is the most troubling since it requires that your exam be graded by hand. Feb 16: > I am trying to do this last problem in the hw and really do not > understand how i am supposed to determine the percentage of ppl who have > been added to the workforce and are unemployeed and the number who were > unemployed and still are. I know the addition to the labor force in > 2004, and i know the change in the amount of people unemployeed in 2004 > and the change in pop of that from 2003. Is there another aspect that i > must consider, I mean i know there is but can you give me a hint as to > how to solve this problem? I looked through every single one of the > charts that were provided but really just dont understand where to go, or > how to solve this. I don't think you can do this with one of the tables that I gave you a link to. That's why I said I was leaving it to you to find it. You need to go to the BLS website and look for a table that has this kind of information. Feb 9: 2) Are we going to have true-false on the exam, or just multiple > choice and short answer? The short answer could in principle be of the form: True/False/Explain. > 3) How does the curve work? I know that in 101, 1/4 got As, 1/3 got Bs > and the rest were Cs, Ds and Fs. 102 is the same. Feb 9: > For the handout on diversification, the one with graphs and probability, > will we need to be able to recreate something like that for the exam with > different numbers? Yes, I can imagine an exam question that would ask you to do something like that. Feb 8: > I was just wondering if the aggregate supply and demand material (Mankiw > chap. 15) will be on our midterm. You said you would tell us in class on > Tuesday but I don't think you mentioned it. Thanks Actually, I did. Material from Chapter 15 will not be on this exam. Feb 7: > I have a question regarding the the weekly summaries of economic related > articles we are assigned. On the homework it states "Find an article in > this week’s Wall Street Journal or other news source". Earlier in the > year a family member of mine bought me a subscription to The Economist. > Is that an ok source to select my articles from? It often has more > interesting articles to read than the WSJ. Yes, absolutely! The Economist is excellent (but rather expensive; you should thank your benefactor). Feb 7: > One quick question about the exam. I just did the Winter '02 exam, and > there were several questions about "fiat money, commodity money, reserve > requirements, and money supply," none of which seem familiar to me. Those > topics won't be on our exam, right? No, those questions are from the next topic that we will be covering in class. The exam was later that year (Feb 20), and so covered more. Feb 5: > A few (mostly logistical) questions: > > Are there going to be questions about unemployment on the exam? No, not on the first midterm. > Do we need to know the various other measure of national income (like NNP, > national income, etc)? If it is in the assigned chapters of the textbook, then it could be asked about. > To compare dollar figures from different years, can you use either the > CPI or the GDP deflator? Yes, you might. Normally on an exam, though, we would specify which one we wanted you to use, and then of course you'd have to use that. > Do we need to know specific statistics about GDP, growth rates, etc for > different countries? You don't need to know the numbers, but you should know the messages that particular tables are telling you. Feb 3: > Will the first midterm have material covered in Chapters 1-4 on it, since > we really didn't divulge on it much since it was review? Thanks. No, it will not include questions on chapters 1-4 explicitly, except perhaps for what I talked about in class. However, the point of the review was that we use some of those concepts in what we did later, and of course that is eligible to be covered on exams. Feb 1: > I would like to bring to your attention the fact that the author whose > article we recently debated is not "Orzag" but in fact "Orszag". Orszag, > by the way, is a typical Hungarian name. Thanks for that. I've corrected it online. Feb 1: > I was wondering if we could go over extra practice > problems in section INSTEAD of going over the homework because we have > access to the solutions online. Thanks. I have sent the GSIs an e-mail with that suggestion. (I did also say that they should be willing to answer questions about the homework, but that those questions should be more specific than "How do you do question x?" since for that the students can go to the posted answers.) Jan 26: > Are we to hand in the 3-question WSJ Assignment in our sections? No, the questions about the WSJ article are not an assignment. Like the questions on the outside readings, they are just to help you know what I expect you to learn from the article, and what I may ask about on exams. Jan 12: > I understand that we are required to read a number of short readings from > the web. Will our homework or exams questions be based on these short > readings too? Not the homework, but yes there will be a few questions on the exams that will be based on the readings. A good guide to what those questions may be can be found in the questions that I've given you on each of the readings.