Economics exam: finished. :-0

[rockymountaindem]

Please take a moment of your time to indulge me and listen to my story about my economics exam which I finished less than 30 minutes ago.

So there I was, not knowing the answers to a multiple choice question and major portion of the essay portion. I guessed on the multiple choice one to go along with my rule about "if one of the answers is 'both a and c', pick that one", especially because I thought c was right. However, not knowing what the real formula was for the long answer parts, I went back to the MC question (they were on the same topic) and I realized I had to choose between two opposite formulas, only one of which was correct. So, sez I, even though this was a simple definition question, a little math never hurt anybody (kiddies, pay attention in algebra class, it'll save your life). I figured that one way, your answers will always be one, which couldn't be right. I also plugged them both into the long answer question and determined that answer 'a' was wrong, because in the example it made the Euro overvalued when I could tell from the extra information that the Euro was undervalued relative to the CPI in both the US and Europe. That led me to believe that answer 'b' on the MC part was correct.

So basically, I used the answers from the MC portion as a basis for answering the essay part, and then used what I got from the essay portion to find the right answer to the MC part! Pretty good, considering that if you asked me those questions one at a time I would have gotten them wrong.

So after the exam I looked at my notes, which said I had messed up the whole thing. "F***!!!!!!!!!!!!!!", thought I. Then, when I complained about it to my classmates (who all agreed that test was an ass kicker), they looked in their notes and the textbook, and told me that the prof (who is kind of a scatterbrain) had given us the wrong formula in one place, the right one somewhere else, and that the textbook and their own calculations backed up what I thought, which was that the Euro was undervalued in the example. So, in the end, I still got them right. "Good thing I didn't look at my notes too closely", I thought, "because the notes were wrong. Man, I was smart to forget the notes and just go with math and common sense". Baaa-zing!

:evilgrin:

[kick-ass-bob]

1. that's what economics is.

Common sense plugged into mathematical equations!

:D

[tjwmason]

8. The other way around

You take common sense, and try to turn it into a mathematical equation.

I'm with the line from the West Wing that economists were put on this planet to make astrologers look good.

tjwmason M.A.(Hons.) St.And. - Economics and International Relations (just so you know I'm not being beastly about economists).

[kick-ass-bob]

9. that's actually what I was trying to say.

See? That's shows I'm a true economist - I don't do words well.

:P

[tjwmason]

11. Nearly but not quite

A true economist never agrees with anybody else - that's the most important rule.

[David__77]

2. I'm an economics grad student--I sympathize.

But I do miss multiple choice exams, which I haven't seen since before I got my BA! Economics coupled with derivatives, integration and linear algebra is a real pain in the ass...

[kick-ass-bob]

4. I used to have MC grad school tests every now and then....

I would rather have had plain old "essay" types.
10 questions, but each seemed to take an hour to answer! :o

[rockymountaindem]

5. I don't plan on going that far.

I'm a history and international relations major, but econ has been pretty interesting. I've come up with this: I know what all the curves and lines mean, and how all the percentages interact; when the time comes to actually figure out how to draw the lines myself, and figure out things like "the marginal propensity to import" without them being given to me, that's when I've gone too far.

[DS1]

3. You can often find the answer to one question in an exam in the form

of another question elsewhere in the booklet, :toast:

[rockymountaindem]

6. That's the one thing I learned from

my incompetant, unqualified, foolhardy and immature 8th grade geometry teacher.

[Aiptasia]

7. And then trickle down economic theory was introduced

and everything went to hades in a shopping cart. I can remember Reagan trying to get people to believe in that nonsense back in the 80's with George senior.

I was so happy to watch "A Beautiful Mind" a few years back, and realize that Adam Smith's theory was wrong. I'm still waiting for republicans to claim John Nash's revised theory of economics is socialist/communist and anti-american.

[kick-ass-bob]

10. One of my profs worshipped Nash.

He talked about him every day.
Of course, he was all into game theory.