Tidbits on November 14, 2011
Bob Jensen
at Trinity University
This week I feature 2011 Set
3 of my favorite foliage pictures at the peak of this foliage season
www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Tidbits/Foliage/Set03/FoliageSet03.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
White
Mountain News ---
http://www.whitemtnews.com/
Tidbits on November 14, 2011
Bob Jensen
For earlier editions of Tidbits go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
For earlier editions of New Bookmarks go to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/.
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Bob Jensen's Home Page is at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/
Online Video, Slide Shows, and Audio
In the past I've provided links to various types of music and video available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
It’s the Tax Code, Stupid: Niall Ferguson Solves Our Economic
Mess ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/its_the_tax_code_stupid_niall_ferguson_solves_our_economic_mess.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
NOVA: scienceNOW: Explore Teacher's Guides ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/educators/subject-anth.html
Calculus Lifesaver: A Free Online Course from Princeton ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/calculus_lifesaver_a_free_online_course.html
Absolutely amazing: 6th grade iPhone app developer speaks at
TEDx ---
Click Here
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2011/11/09/absolutely-amazing-6th-grade-iphone-app-developer-speaks-at-tedx/
Video: The Wonderful, Wooden Marble Adding Machine ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/marble_adding_machine.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Say Something Nice ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RwEYYI-AGWs#!
Monty Python’s Flying Philosophy ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/monty_pythons_flying_philosophy.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Meet Bob (animated cartoon) ---
http://vimeo.com/25845008
Kitchen Oil Fire ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZGzbd0IvUE
The American Eagle (warning: this
is patriotic; proceed at your own risk) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=oOZF4vTAF2M&vq=medium
If you're in the U.K., this is one way
to be entertained at a bar (although some of the tricks may have been faked) ---
http://file.qip.ru/embed/111226964/dfc05946
Free music downloads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
The Blues (Martin Scorsese's PBS documentary
series) ---
http://www.pbs.org/theblues/index.html
Visualizing Bach: Alexander Chen’s Impossible
Harp ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/visualizing_bach_alexander_chens_impossible_harp.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Norah Jones Sings Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” in Honor of Steve
Jobs (Plus Coldplay’s Performance) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/nora_jones_sings_bob_dylans_forever_young.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Two Performances - 47 Years Apart - The Diamonds
---
http://www.flixxy.com/the-diamonds-little-darlin-1957-2004.htm
The Rolling Stones Sing Jingle for Rice Krispies
Commercial (1964) ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/the_rolling_stones_sing_jingle_for_rice_krispies_commercial.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Digital Collections: Amherst College ---
https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/holdings/electexts
Peter Gabriel and His Big Orchestra Play Live at
the Ed Sullivan Theater ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/peter_gabriel_live_from_the_ed_sullivan_theater.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
1959: The Year that Changed Jazz ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/1959_the_year_that_changed_jazz_.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Cars We Drove in the 1950s and 1960s ---
http://cruzintheavenue.com/CarsWeDrove.htm
Neil deGrasse Tyson Stars in New Symphony of
Science ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/neil_degrasse_tyson_stars_in_new_symphony_of_science.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
TableDrum ---
http://www.tabledrum.com/
Charleston -- Original Al & Leon Style!! ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s58iTzznkp0
A Better Rendition ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJC21zzkwoE
Poor Little Robin ... Walking, Walking to
Missouri ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPN4jmVxSos
Pete Seeger: To Hear Your Banjo Play in 1947---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/pete_seeger_to_hear_your_banjo_play.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
A priceless clip is from The Jerk starring
Steve Martin. The memorable line is that "Every time the old woman farts we kick
the dog."
This is not a clip from that scene but this clip is funny ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTwz-mlJPL0
Incidentally, Steve now has his own bluegrass band that features him on a banjo.
He says he wanted to be known for something more complicated than being a jerk
---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l31MSpojWTA
Tenor Joseph Calleja And Friends At (Le) Poisson
Rouge (full concert) ---
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/21/141593584/tenor-joseph-calleja-and-friends
Reviving A Forgotten Operatic Masterpiece Of The
Holocaust ---
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/24/141651005/a-forgotten-operatic-masterpiece-of-the-holocaust-is-revived
Battle Hymn of the Republic ---
http://www.greatdanepro.com/Battle Hymn/index.htm
Web outfits like
Pandora, Foneshow, Stitcher, and Slacker broadcast portable and mobile content
that makes Sirius look overpriced and stodgy ---
http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2009/tc20090327_877363.htm?link_position=link2
TheRadio (my favorite commercial-free
online music site) ---
http://www.theradio.com/
Slacker (my second-favorite commercial-free online music site) ---
http://www.slacker.com/
Gerald Trites likes this
international radio site ---
http://www.e-radio.gr/
Songza:
Search for a song or band and play the selection ---
http://songza.com/
Also try Jango ---
http://www.jango.com/?r=342376581
Sometimes this old guy prefers the jukebox era (just let it play through) ---
http://www.tropicalglen.com/
And I listen quite often to Soldiers Radio Live ---
http://www.army.mil/fieldband/pages/listening/bandstand.html
Also note U.S. Army Band recordings
---
http://bands.army.mil/music/default.asp
Bob Jensen listens to music free online (and no commercials)
---
http://www.slacker.com/
Photographs and Art
Photos from Japan, 6 months after the 2011
earthquake and tsunamis, ---
http://blogs.sacbee.com/photos/2011/09/japan-marks-6-months-since-ear.html
Yale University Art Gallery ---
http://artgallery.yale.edu/pages/collection/buildings/build_trumbull.php
Click on "The Collection" for a menu
Trailer La Pianista (The Piano Teacher) subtitulos español ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se2UBmdqBUc
Digital Collections: Amherst College ---
https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/holdings/electexts
Sisteen Chapel ---
http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html
The Beauty of Pollination ---
http://www.youtube.com/v/xHkq1edcbk4?version=3
University of Miami Libraries Digital
Collections: University of Miami Archives (over 500,000 photographs) ---
http://merrick.library.miami.edu/digitalprojects/photographs.php
Names of Paris Métro Stops Acted Out: Photos by
Janol Apin ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/names_of_paris_metro_stops_acted_out_photos_by_janol_apin.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Knight Digital Media Center: Maps Tutorials ---
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/cat/maps
The Science of Vision and the Emergence of Art
---
http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/index.html
Multimedia: de Young Museum ---
http://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/collections/multimedia
Pacific Historic Parks ---
http://pacifichistoricparks.org/
Miss America Protests, 1968 and 1969 (gender) ---
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/missamerica/
From Bryn Mawr College
Serendip [Often makes use of Flash Player] ---
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/
Bob Jensen's threads on history, literature and art ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Online Books, Poems, References, and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various
types electronic literature available free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Royal Society Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online
---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/royal_society_opens_online_archive_puts_60000_papers_online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Now in Another Tidbits Document
Political Quotations on November 14, 2011
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/tidbits/2011/TidbitsQuotations0111411.htm
Video: Hans Rosling Uses Ikea Props to Explain World of 7 Billion
People ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/hans_rosling_uses_ikea_props.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
U.S. National Debt Clock ---
http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/
Peter G.
Peterson Website on Deficit/Debt Solutions ---
http://www.pgpf.org/
Bob Jensen's health care messaging updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Health.htm
Bob Jensen's Advice to New Faculty and Faculty Seeking Renewal
Hi XXXXX,
These are among the toughest requests for advice that I receive. I get these
questions now and then from new faculty and faculty who find themselves rejected
for tenure. Second I get these questions from faculty who find themselves
treading water as tenured associate professors lost at sea.
First, my answer is contingent upon your own credentials and skills.
Accounting professors with doctorates who have great quantitative skills for
accountics science will have an easier time getting those all-important hits in
top accounting research journals. For them my advice is to make friends with
lots of potential co-authors (the journals don't care if an article has ten
authors) and carefully read my paper on how to play the game:
Gaming for Tenure as an
Accounting Professor ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
(with a reply about tenure publication point systems from
Linda Kidwell)
Second, my answer is contingent upon your particular college or
university.
As long as you get a few refereed publications (even in obscure journals), some
colleges will bend every which way to keep you if you are both a good teacher
among your students and a good team player among your colleagues. However, this
can be a mixed blessing. I know of some liberal arts universities where the
Department of Business gave glowing recommendations for tenure/promotion of a
faculty member weak on publications only to have the college-wide P&T Committee
object because of a feeling that the same standards for research and publication
that apply to chemists and psychologists should also apply to accountants. There
are also envy objections if the accounting assistant professor has twice as much
salary as a full professor in chemistry and psychology.
Third, my answer is contingent upon the value your university may place
upon innovation and teaching evaluations.
Some faculty have discovered how to build worldwide reputations as innovators in
edutainment and/or technology. Read about some of the faculty that won the
Innovations in Accounting Education Award at
http://aaahq.org/awards/awrd6win.htm
Winning this award can go a long way toward tenure and promotion. However, the
odds of winning such an award are small. You might spend a great deal or time
and effort being an innovator that is not particularly appreciated by students
or colleagues. Sadly most students want to be spoon fed from textbooks as long
as they can also have an easy time getting A and B grades in this era of grade
inflation:
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GradeInflation
Sadly, most colleges evaluate teaching on the basis of student evaluations. And
students often demand high grades for glowing evaluations.
Fourth, beware of being viewed as too soft and easy.
When instructors are trying too hard to please students with grades and gut
courses, this effort to win over students and colleagues can backfire. Some
professors earn stellar reputations for teaching tough courses with high
standards. Be prepared, however, to read damning student evaluations and/or
four-letter words about yourself on RateMyProfessor.com.
Fifth, work, work, work
Sadly, some faculty don't get tenured/promoted because they set priorities in
life that detract from job performance. I know more than one accounting
associate professor who earned a PhD from a top-ten research university, got
enough TAR, JAR, and JAE hits to make tenure at an R1 research university, and
then has not been heard from since earning tenure. In most instances that
associate professor changed priorities in life, including parenthood to a fault,
chasing around after a divorce, taking on hobbies like building a real
airplane/yacht in a barn, building harps accords, building violins, performing
in string quartets, etc. Some just plain burn out and become diseased with
depression and alcoholism.
Six, become a quality administrator and or servant of your profession
There's no shame in burning out at research and/or teaching if you have skills
and ambitions for other alternatives in a college. There's no honor in becoming
a lousy dean if you've been a lousy researcher or teacher. However, if you're a
good researcher/teacher who just wants other challenges in life, there are some
terrific challenges when becoming a serious administrators. Being a good
administrator also takes a different kind of skill set and dedication. There are
extensions of this concept in the field of public and professional service.
Exhibit A is the quality reputation that Dan Deines (Kansas State University)
built over a lifetime of dedication of promoting accountancy among K-12 students
and their advisors and parents.
Seven, become a researcher/publisher and consultant in a small niche
Sometimes earning a worldwide reputation in research takes dedication toward
research in a small niche. For example, accounting professors in the past have
found niches in such things as oil and gas accounting, accounting history, or
accounting for interest rate swaps (like me). Few, however, have explored
becoming accounting experts in synthetic leasing, XBRL, securitizations ,
casualty insurance, or in managerial accounting for specific industries like
funeral parlors, QVC, or Avon.
Eight, take other roads less traveled
I know quite a few accounting and business faculty who became totally dedicated
to NACRA and other case writing associations. Unable or unwilling to build
accountics science reputations, they built international reputations for writing
both teaching and research cases. My threads on case writing are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases
This route sometimes becomes popular for lawyers who do not have PhD-level
research training.
Nine, consider the possibility of becoming a special needs student expert
It's rare for an accounting professor to become an expert for special needs
students such as students who are hearing impaired, vision impaired, paralyzed,
hyperactive, bipolar, etc. I think there's a real niche here. My threads on this
topic are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped
Ten, remember that respect for scholarship is depth and
content
It can be dysfunctional to become a superficial blogger or a maintain a
superficial Website. Reputations are not built on publishing, blogging, social
networking, or Websites alone. Reputations are built upon the content of
publishing, blogging, social networking, or Websites.
And reputable content can take a lifetime of blood, sweat, and tears!
My threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
There really is no easy way out in terms of a quality long-term professional
reputation. Too many failed professors tried to do too many things superficially
and failed to build a quality reputation that stands out when the Great Scorer
comes to write against their names. Good guys often finish last.
"I don't want to be a police officer, firefighter,
jet pilot, pro quarterback, or President of the United States. I would rather be
a tax accountant."
Parent having a fantasy conversation with their little kid.
"Here’s a Bunch of Cute Kids Explaining Why They Want to Be Tax
Accountants," by Caleb Newquist, Going Concern, November 4, 2011 ---
http://goingconcern.com/2011/11/heres-a-bunch-of-cute-kids-explaining-why-they-want-to-be-tax-accountants/#more-51244
Why are these kids given scripts to read?
The answer is that they don't even know what a tax accountant is or does.
Police officers, on the other hand, get to carry real guns, have cars with
flashing lights. live on donuts, and never get speeding tickets.
Does anybody under the age of 19-20 really want to become a tax accountant?
The question is why do young people eventually change their minds about
becoming accounting majors?
In my opinion, parents are the main source of inspiration, followed by older
accounting students who explain why they chose this major.
Accounting teachers in college can also play a huge role if they explain career
alternatives in a truthful (no hard sell) manner.
Bob Jensen's threads on what makes young people change their minds to major
in accounting?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob1.htm#careers
"The Race, the Cloud, the Blog," by Andrew McAfee, The Financial
Education Daily, November 9, 2011 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub
Plugs his mew book entitled Race Against the Machine
The book purportedly deals with
"How the digital revolution is accelerating innovation, driving productivity,
and irreversibly transforming employment and the economy"
"Meet Toyota's Robotic Nurses: Toyota's robots could help
rehabilitate or transport the injured or ill," by David Zax, Technology
Review, November 10, 2011 ---
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/helloworld/27330/?nlid=nldly&nld=2011-11-11
Jensen Comment
I think that one of the best illustrations of how machines replaced labor early
in the history of robotics is when GM built its first Saturn automated robotics
plant in Tennessee ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_%28car%29
This bit of history shows how robot welders replaced human welders, etc. Many of
the innovations came from the Japan where there has always been a great
fascination with robotics. If it were not for labor resistance (political and
union contract resistance) there's no telling how much more robotics would be in
use today. Perhaps the switch could be turned on an automobile assembly plant
that had no workers (other than those that fix robots).
There are thousands of other examples. There was a time when corn and
tomatoes had to be picked by hand. For years we've been picking corn with
enormous combines. The same can be said for tomatoes on our daughter-in-law's
huge family "farm" north of Sacramento. Most of the workers on the ranch repair
machines, including 15 combines for tomatoes. One day these tomatoes may not
even have to be trucked to a juicing plant. Each combine might have a spout that
fills tomato juice tanker trucks.
The opportunities for unskilled workers is shrinking, and the many workers
who have skills find that these skills are no longer needed. I haven't had to
have a car tuned up for years, but on occasion there's been a computer glitch.
Not all mechanics that can fix carbonators have an aptitude for fixing the many
computers now controlling my cars.
There's an old fashioned car repair shop about three miles down the road in
Franconia. More often than not the head mechanic in that shop says:
"We can't do that type of work here. You have to take it to a dealer."
And the small dealers up here say:
"Maybe you should get this fixed in Manchester or Boston."
November 10, 2011 reply from Robin Alexandra
I am very worried about the future of our economy
based man replaced by machine. If one has any empathy for one’s fellow man
(and of course woman) there is cause for concern. In the recent past, human
work for most people consisted of acting as fancy machines such as the auto
plants you mentioned or picking produce. There are dozens if not hundreds or
more examples. Even skilled human contact jobs such as the human you used to
be able to talk to when you called a company have been replaced by those
horrible auto-answer trees one has to navigate. And, as you say, the skilled
jobs are becoming harder. Since retirement I have pursued web creation
technology but as soon as I learn something, it is obsolete or there is a
new version with many changes.
I know you love capitalism but it’s going to
collapse or it has to transform in some way. In the last half of the
twentieth century, companies, owned by stockholders or privately owned,
hired workers who had no ownership interest but had work skills that were
valuable. But many of them were glorified machines or could be replaced by
machines (such as the phone answering systems) or by electronics such as
electronic banking that reduces the need for tellers. So the owners of
companies will produce at lower cost but eventually who will have any money
to buy the goods produced when most of the nonprofessional jobs are gone?
The gap between rich and poor that has been steadily rising will continue to
rise until it is unsustainable if it is not already so. Also an economy
based on people buying more and more stuff may also be unsustainable as
increased pollution and use of fossil fuels continues to rise.
I think that eventually (soon) we will have to find
a different, more equitable and sustainable means for wealth distribution. I
don’t know what that will look like but it seems pretty clear that the path
we are on is neither equitable nor sustainable.
Robin A.
November 10, 2011 reply from Zane Swanson
So Bob, what does this
particular thread have to do with accounting? And may be a sort of answer
below.
The impact of machines upon
the supply and demand of the economy affects the individual in many ways.
For the general population, it is like a crowd of blind men touching
different parts of an elephant and coming up with different conclusions.
While automation and international trade has potentially increased the
supply of goods at lower prices, these factors have also ended domestic job
situations through the consequent Schlumperian destruction. The
ability/possibilities for individuals to adapt is the open question.
Accounting does not measure this evolutionary aspect very well … if at all.
The intangibles of a business / society do not appear to accounted in ways
that decision makers can do anything or even figure what is going on. What
is your niche worth and how fast will it go out of date?
An ultimate conundrum is:
Can observers tell if it deserves a Turning machine award because observers
can’t tell if it is a machine versus a human on the other end of the phone?
Does it matter that one type of assembly machines produce Saturn cars (and
what are their sales now-a-days anyway?) versus other types of Wally Do-Gooder
fuzzy logic machines that replace call center personnel, or any other
workers in routinized paper pushing, etc? Or is the I, Robot substance of
science fiction becoming reality and affecting your quality of life?
Zane Swanson
From Emory University
Study Skills Tip Sheets & Advice ---
http://www.college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/studyskillsconsultations/tips.html
Advice From Students
Study Skills Tip Sheets
Links to Academic Resources
Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
Many people can enter their zip codes into ZipSkinny and compare themselves
with their neighbors. But ZipSkinny has no data for many boondock places,
including the boondocks where I live with zip code 03586.---
http://www.zipskinny.com/
"Why I No Longer Teach Online," by Nancy Bunge, Chronicle of Higher
Education, November 6, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-I-No-Longer-Teach-Online/129615/#disqus_thread
I had no interest in online teaching until a
colleague who shared my literary background told me he used it to encourage
students to engage more deeply with texts.
Since I teach general-education courses that
require challenging readings, I thought having students write analyses and
submit them online would give them more involvement with the text and me a
sharper sense of what they understood. So I signed up for multiple
online-teaching workshops, and the following year I substituted a weekly
online lesson for about a fourth of my classes.
I thought the courses went well. During the fall
semester in 2008, students who were asked to evaluate the online work
responded positively, maintaining a tactful silence about my technological
ineptitude. I might ask them to analyze specific passages from Immanuel
Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, then articulate their own
perspectives on his ideas, providing evidence for their claims. I also asked
them to list a number of central ideas from Martin Buber's I and Thou, to
cite supporting passages from the text, and to arrange these ideas into a
logical sequence. The following semester I participated in a seminar on
building blended courses and found it invigorating. By the end of that
academic year, I expected to gradually increase the online component of my
classes.
Over the summer of 2009, I attended the Conference
on Distance Teaching & Learning at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. I
learned that scholars had started looking critically at online instruction
to tease out the approaches that genuinely work. Those comments made me
realize that although I had enjoyed experimenting in my class, I had little
confidence that my innovations generated better work.
My students responded with mildly encouraging
remarks, not spectacular results. But their generous reactions the previous
fall to my old-fashioned online assignments (such as asking them to analyze
a passage of literature using an idea from a philosophic work we read)
persuaded me that it made sense to use online work to coax students to think
through texts on their own.
I continued to teach a quarter of my course
material online, but primarily I had my students write analyses. But a
troubling pattern emerged in my two "Philosophy in Literature" sections:
Students who attended class, did the reading, and completed the online
assignments seemed to enjoy the course and found the online assignments
useful. But too many students struggled to complete the course requirements.
I wondered if adding the online material had pushed students away. So I
dropped the online component the following academic year.
I told my classes I could add online work if
students requested it, but not a single student of the 147 enrolled in all
my classes asked for it. The same "Philosophy in Literature" classes that
had left me wondering the previous semester whether students could handle
essential conceptual work went well. Both years, students filled out online
evaluations. Since many more filled them out the second year, and the
surveys posed different questions, they fall far short of a scientific
sample. But the vastly different results are interesting.
I began teaching online because I thought students
would be more challenged writing about the texts on their own than talking
about them in class. But in fact they thought they learned more and were
more challenged intellectually when the course had no online component, even
though the online work involved substantial analysis.
Some 74 percent of those who took the course
without any regular online assignments rated it as offering a
higher-than-average intellectual challenge, compared with 58 percent of
those in a course with an online component. Both years, another question
asked students how much they had learned. Only 42 percent of those who had
done online work evaluated their learning in the course as above average,
compared with 63 percent in the course with no online component.
The most interesting contrast shows up in the
comments: Those who liked my course with the online modules praised its
organization, while students in the course with no online component talked
about my enthusiasm, respect for their opinions, and obsession with making
sure they understood the texts and assignments—all traits beyond a
computer's reach.
Studying my students' reactions reminds me that
teaching well means participating in a relationship with them. Apparently,
turning over a fourth of the course to a computer weakened the bond between
us, even though every week I wrote individual responses to their online
work. I wondered why students gave me good evaluations the first time I
attempted online teaching. Perhaps my blundering won them over. I made many
mistakes as I learned to use the technology, so I e-mailed them frequently
and anxiously monitored their reactions. They may have appreciated the same
thing that students in my traditional classes liked: my concern for their
learning.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen added the following comment to Professor Bunge's article
---
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-I-No-Longer-Teach-Online/129615/#disqus_thread
You seem to have avoided the usual pitfall of differences between
students in on-campus degree programs versus students in onsite programs ---
the student effects.
However, your research does not eliminate instructor effects since you are
only studying yourself as an instructor --- the instructor effects.
Your evidence is anecdotal and fails to mention some of the more scientific
experiments between online versus onsite learning. My favorite example is
the SCALE program at the University of Illinois that tracked 30 courses for
five years in various disciplines where the same instructors taught online
and onside sections using the same course materials.
The SCALE experiments found that many B students onsite became A students
online and C students onsite became B students online. There was no
significant difference between D and F students online or onsite. It's
important to note the SCALE research effort to eliminate instructor effects
and student effects.
The SCALE experiments and somewhat similar research studies are summarized
at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois
The advantages and limitations of asynchronous learning are summarized at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm
The biggest problem with online education is instructor burnout. This arises
in great measure due to intensity of one-on-one communications with
students.
One of the great onsite teachers (all-university teaching awards at three
universities) discusses her experiences shifting to online teaching ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/Dunbar2002.htm
Bob Jensen
Bloomberg Business Week asked that I share the following links with
you:
1. Personal Finance News:
http://www.bloomberg.com/personal-finance/
2. Saving and Investing:
http://www.bloomberg.com/personal-finance/saving-and-investing/
3. Retirement Planning:
http://www.bloomberg.com/personal-finance/retirement-planning/
4. Real Estate Investing:
http://www.bloomberg.com/personal-finance/real-estate/
5. Tax News:http://www.bloomberg.com/personal-finance/taxes/
6. Financial Advisers:
http://www.bloomberg.com/personal-finance/financial-advisers/
7. Insurance and Health:
http://www.bloomberg.com/personal-finance/insurance-and-health/
8. Financial Calculators:
http://www.bloomberg.com/personal-finance/calculators/
9. Businessweek Magazine Online:
http://www.businessweek.com/subscribe/
I also added the Financial Calculators link to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#080512Calculators
I added the tax news to
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm#News
Question
What time consuming tasks are you performing that your former professors were
not assigned to perform?
"The Shadowy (Work) Side of Academia," by Heather M. Whitney,
Chronicle of Higher Education, November 10, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/the-shadowy-work-side-of-academia/37155?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Last week, the New York Times published an article
by Craig Lambert entitled “Our
Unpaid, Extra Shadow Work.” In it, Lambert
describes the manner in which some tasks, ones that in the past have been
performed by employees, have been tacked on to the jobs of others. This
process, he argues, has resulted in the loss of employment for many and is
facilitated at least in part by technology developments. It has also
resulted in measurably larger work loads for those who retain their jobs and
may be a growing contributor to the common medical complaint of fatigue.
Arguments on employment loss aside, I was struck by
how many different tasks in the professoriate could be categorized as shadow
work. For example, I do all my own copying, scanning, mail preparation,
correspondence (both digital and in print): the list of tasks not directly
related to my teaching or research, but in support of them, goes on and on.
And it’s not as though I can drop doing any of
these tasks, nor is it appropriate for me to dump these on our office
coordinator, who has loads of work to do on her own. But I can spend a bit
of time reflecting on how much shadow work I do and how I can streamline it
so it doesn’t take up more time than needed. A good review of past
ProfHacker tips is on my to-do list.
How about you? How has shadow work crept into your
life as a faculty member? What are you doing to manage it?
Jensen Comment
I think this article ignores the tasks the your former professors performed that
you no longer have to perform or can perform in much less time. For example,
even if a secretary typed the letters and papers of a former professor, that
professor had to take considerable time proof reading the spelling and grammar.
Now much of that can be done in a fraction of a second using a word
processor (although some of us don't bother enough to use spelling and grammar
technology in our email messaging). The same can be said for those student essay
answers and term papers that are now submitted electronically by students.
Former professors sometimes suspected plagiarism, but to do something about
it might've entailed a rather time consuming trip to the campus library, search
of a card catalog, and wandering about somewhat lost in the stacks. Now we use
high speed technology to detect plagiarism more efficiently and effectively ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#Detection
For mathematical equations, professors had to spend considerable time
checking the accuracy of what students derived in examinations and term papers
and theses. Have you tried the absolutely fantastic Wolfram Alpha lately?
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm#WolframAlpha
Some former professors wasted considerable time flirting with staff and even
students. Have you read your college's policy of sexual harassment these days?
And to top it off those pools of departmental secretaries and student workers
evaporated into thin air.
And finding an item in your university's faculty handbook, student handbook,
course catalog, transcripts of committee meetings, etc. sometimes took ages in
the past. Now faculty and staff can go online and find that item in lightning
speed.
Former professors often spent a lot of time having face-to-face office hours
with students. Now we make them watch our video answers online, and if they
still are confused we correspond with them via email. And yes, I do know that
some things are lost (other than time) by not getting to know our students
better face-to-face.
And when I passed the CPA examination as a senior in college, I had to
"memorize" upwards of 2,000 (a wild guess) paragraphs of accounting and auditing
standards. Now instructors of accounting, auditing, and tax must be familiar
with upwards of 50,000 (a wild guess) paragraphs. The good news is, however,
that those paragraphs can found instantly online along with Bob Jensen's
perfected interpretations of those paragraphs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
For example, for paragraphs and interpretations regarding interest rate swap
valuation use Google Search and [" interest rate swap valuation" AND "Bob
Jensen" ].
I almost forgot to mention how much of our lives are now wasted on technology
glitches that didn't exist before we were all using computers.
Think of the time wasted trying to recover lost computer files. I have shelves
of old floppy disks and CDs out in my barn, but what a chore it would be to find
an old document. But then again, those old hard copy documents (such as a 20
year old working paper that never got published) were probably completely
trashed by my former professors when they retired. At least I now have a chance
of recovering a 20-year old working paper.
Or think of those research documents on your office computer that you forgot to
back up on another hard drive or CD.
How much time have you wasted with idle chit chat with a computer technician who
is trying to bring your office computer back to life? Former professors only
wasted time with maintenance people changing light bulbs or washing windows.
Think of the years you wasted fantasizing about ways to kill Bill Gates.
Have any of you wasted time after a car accident that was caused by somebody
(maybe not you) who was distracted while texting or talking on a phone while
driving? Fortunately, this has never happened to me, but it's becoming a time
waster when such fender benders take place due to newer technology. Your former
professors probably only had car accidents when they plowed into a wagon of hay
bales being pulled by a slow moving tractor or team of horses. Of course that
can still happen today, but I worry more about drivers that I encounter on the
road who are using cell phones.
And think of how much time is wasted today filling out forms. In the old days
professors simply wrote a check when they visited a doctor's office.
Of course in the old days professors had to spend a weekend or more doing their
tax returns plus the hours spent reading about changes in the tax laws. Now it
takes maybe an hour with TurboTax, and you can be a virtual dummy about changes
in the tax law. Of course it does help for tax planning purposes to look for
some changes (like energy credits) that can benefit you if you take advantage of
them during the year.
What do you think takes more of your time these days, and what takes less
time if you're an accounting instructor?
What do you think takes more of your time these days, and what takes less
time if you're an accounting instructor?
Question
What is near-field communication (NFC) and why is Japan leading the way?
"Technology 2012 Preview: Part 1 Experts explain what should be at the top
of your tech wish list for the new year," Journal of Accountancy, November
2011 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2011/Nov/20114310.htm
Bob Jensen's technology trends archives are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
Calculus Lifesaver: A Free Online Course from Princeton ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/calculus_lifesaver_a_free_online_course.html
Video: The Wonderful, Wooden Marble Adding Machine ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/marble_adding_machine.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on free online courses, lectures, videos, and course
materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
Bob Jensen's bookmarks for free mathematics and statistics tutorials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Interesting Visualization Illustrations
Video: Hans Rosling Uses Ikea Props to Explain World of 7 Billion
People ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/hans_rosling_uses_ikea_props.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Video: The Housing Speculative Bubble Explained in Animated Infographics
---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-the-housing-speculative-bubble-explained-in-animated-infographics/
Although you may not be so interested in medical statistics today, you might
be interested in some advances in visualizing data
"Video: Ted Talk – Visualizing the medical data explosion," Simoleon
Sense, January 20, 2011
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-ted-talk-visualizing-the-medical-data-explosion/
Japan Earthquake: Before and After ---
http://www.abc.net.au/news/events/japan-quake-2011/beforeafter.htm
This is neat visualization technology. Drag the mouse pointer back and forth
across each picture
Bob Jensen's threads on visualization of multivariate data ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/352wpvisual/000datavisualization.htm
The Science of Vision and the Emergence of Art ---
http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/index.html
Updates on Interactive Excel
Spreadsheets
Hi Ken,
In the old days I provided my students with interactive spreadsheet
JavaScript coding for online interactions ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm#JavaScript
But in recent years Web browsers can run interactive spreadsheets more
efficiently. However, since I rarely generate interactive spreadsheets for the
Web these days I would still probably resort to horse and buggy JavaScript.
For interactive spreadsheets (using Excel functions) today I might follow
follow the instructions at if I wanted to upgrade my skills ---
Click Here
http://blogs.office.com/b/crabby_office_lady/archive/2011/02/25/excel-spreadsheets-embed-on-web.aspx
Other options can be found by opening Excel Help and searching for
"interactive."
Here's a neat video on how to conduct a Web query and compute interactive
functions ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_6s8n1Eeto
It's still dangerous to download Excel spreadsheets with macros (macros
provide the best way to create and use interactive spreadsheets offline if you
are creating these spreadsheets to be used by yourself and close friends). But
strangers and students are taking a huge risk by downloading Excel spreadsheets
and running macros because there are so many virus infections that can accompany
macros downloaded from the Web.
I never run macros even when the Excel or other MS Office files are forwarded
from friends. Friends can innocently send you macro viruses. Of course I create
macros in MS Office for my own use. But I rarely send such files to anybody
else.
Respectfully,
Bob Jensen
On Wed, Nov 9, 2011 at 11:34 AM, XXXXX wrote:
I was wondering
if you can help me with a excel spreadsheet that I would like to
create as a spreadsheet app on a website. I obtained your email
off a google search engine search for help on excel interactive
spreadsheets. I have excel 2003 and I am having difficulty
making the spreadsheet interactive. I also have questions
regarding the capability of a web app to perform the following
functions:
Locking cells
Sorting
Filtering
Freezing Panes
Validation-Drop down menu’s
Also my
understanding is that you can not create buttons to run these
functions like you can in excel. (running of Macro’s).
If you are not
able to help me could you direct me to someone who may be able
to help. I have been researching different software
(Spreadsheet Converter, Spreadsheetweb, etc..) and none seem to
be able to do the functions that I need done.
I appreciate
your time. Sorry to bother you, but I am running out of
options.
Thanks,
Ken
Purportedly there is lower "win-win" opportunity for university
partnerships between the United States and India
University partnerships are proving to be win-win partnerings between U.S.
and developing nations such as Mexico and China. The article below suggests
there is lower "win" opportunity for such partnerships between the United
States and India. This is unfortunate since India is much larger than most other
developing nations and has less lower barriers. India is also safer than such
nations as Russia and Mexico. Russia is problematic due to extortion and
organized crime that corrupts grading standards. Mexico is more problematic
because of gang/drug violence and kidnappings. India presents other sorts of
problems mentioned in the article below.
"Limited Partnership," by Philip G. Altbach, Inside Higher Ed,
November 4, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2011/11/04/essay-us-india-higher-education-relationship
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
How Professor Stapel committed academic research fraud is becoming known,
but why he did so remains a mystery
"The Fraud Who Fooled (Almost) Everyone," by Tom Bartlett,
Chronicle of Higher Education, November 3. 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/percolator/the-fraud-who-fooled-almost-everyone/27917
It’s
now known that Diederik Stapel, the Dutch social
psychologist who was suspended by Tilburg University in September, faked
dozens of studies and managed not to get caught for years despite his
outrageous fabrications. But how, exactly, did he do it?
That question won’t be fully answered for a
while—the investigation into the vast fraud is continuing. But a
just-released
English version of Tilburg’s interim report on
Stapel’s deception begins to fill in some of the details of how he
manipulated those who worked with him.
This was, according to the report, his modus
operandi:
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on professors who cheat ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Plagiarism.htm#ProfessorsWhoPlagiarize
"Teaching Carnival 5.03," by Delaney Kirk, Chronicle of Higher
Education, November 1, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/teaching-carnival-5-04/37021?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
[October’s Teaching Carnival was compiled by Delaney Kirk, a
management professor at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee.
You can reach her via
email or on
Twitter . Delaney is
both an educator and an edublogger--ask her a question or check out her tips
on teaching effectiveness at
Ask Dr. Kirk. This month she gathers tips on teaching, advice
to share with our students, ways to utilize technology in the classroom, and
suggestions for personal development, along with a challenge to write that
academic book you’ve been putting off. –Billie Hara]
Know of a blog post (perhaps your own) that should be included in the
next Teaching Carnival…?
- Email the next host directly with the address to the permalink of
your blog post, and/or
- Tag your post in
Delicious (or
Diigo or other
bookmarking service) with teaching-carnival.
Tips on Teaching
Tips on Using Technology
Tips for Our Students
Tips on Personal Development
♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
And if you’ve been putting off writing that academic book or
dissertation, Charlotte Frost invites us all to participate
in the first Academic
Book Writing Month challenge (tweet about it using hash tag #AcBoWriMo).
You can also join NaNoWriMo to start
that novel you’ve been telling people you plan to write someday. Both
challenges begin on November 1st.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on previous Teaching Carnival articles ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Ideas
Scroll down to the Teaching Carnival links and quotations
"Three Traps Facing New Global Leaders,"
by Saj-nicole Jon, BusinessSchools, November 7, 2011 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub
U.S. military doctrine derives not from the two world wars, or our own
Civil War, but from 200 years of battle with our Canadian neighbors to the north
This is a fascinating illustration about how skilled historians find ways to
relate events in history to current affairs. Of course there's danger in
extrapolations that do not take differences in time fully into account. Such
differences include such things as the nuclear arsenal of Pakistan so close to
Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents. Such differences include our experimentation
with robotic warfare such as drone aircraft and laser-guided ordinance that
temporarily at least is a one-sided technology in current American warfare. And
there are issues of fanatical enemies that today will never concede defeat and
seek rebirth in peace.
And most important today is constrained warfare in the presence of
weapons too scary for the world to tolerate and survive. It's like having a
lethal brawl under the rules of Marquess of Queensberry Rules ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marquess_of_Queensberry_Rules
In wars before the 20th century combatants were more willing to use all
available killing technology, although I'm certain that historical scholars can
point to some exceptions such as the way armies had protocols in open-field
face-offs and constrained use of terrorist killing of innocent families behind
the lines. But the following article points out that terrorism was not always
fully constrained. We sometimes matched terror for terror such as the wiping out
of Indian settlements after wagon trains were massacred.
Nevertheless I think these historical extrapolations make history
far more interesting to readers. It would be interesting for accounting
historians to make a summary of historical research in accounting that makes
distinct extrapolations to current situations in the theory and practice of
accountancy.
"America's Distinctive Way of War: U.S. military doctrine derives
not from the two world wars, or our own Civil War, but from 200 years of battle
with our Canadian neighbors to the north." by Eliot Cohen, The Wall
Street Journal, November 11. 2011 ---
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203687504577005804147626694.html#mod=djemEditorialPage_t
In January 2003, the European Union's high
representative for foreign policy, Javier Solana, thought he had the answer:
"Europe has been the territory of war, and we have worked to prevent war
through building relations with other countries. The U.S. has never been the
territory of war—that's why September 11 was so important: It was the first
time their territory had been attacked."
A breathtaking piece of ignorance, that. But it was
only one variant of a common misunderstanding of American history: that the
oceans shielded the U.S. from the brutalities of world politics until the
convulsions of the 20th century left us no choice but to venture into them,
innocent and unprepared.
Not so. America has participated in every global
conflict since the end of the 17th century. What European colonists in North
America called King William's War, Queen Anne's War, King George's War, and
the French and Indian War went by other names in Europe (the War of the
Spanish Succession, for example), but they were parts of the same conflict.
America's War of Independence turned into a global war, and France's
revolution and imperial wars also came to these shores in 1812.
The American way of war originated not in the 20th
century, and not even in our own Civil War, but rather in a protracted
contest with our most enduring and effective enemy of all: Canada.
For almost two centuries, Canada was the greatest
threat to England's American colonies and the young United States. The main
theater in this contest was what Indians called "the Great Warpath," the
200-mile route of water and woodland paths that connected Albany and
Montreal—and, by extension, New York and Quebec cities. It was here that
Americans faced threats, conceived doctrines, and demonstrated martial
qualities that we recognize today.
Confronting state-sponsored terrorism? That
arguably began with a French-led raid on Schenectady, N.Y., in 1690. On a
wintry night, more than 200 attackers (more Europeans than Indians) stormed
the town, slaughtered 60 civilians, burned the houses, and withdrew with
several dozen captives. It was the product not of spontaneous rage, but a
coolly calculated policy of strategic distraction intended to pin down
English forces on the frontier and deflect them from an attack on Quebec.
Demanding unconditional surrender? The American
reaction to the Schenectady raid was to seek the conquest of Canada with the
aim of eliminating France's political presence in North America once and for
all. The brutality of frontier warfare, including events like the massacre
of part of an Anglo-American garrison after the fall of Fort William Henry
in 1757 (a more complicated event than books and films like "Last of the
Mohicans" would suggest), convinced Americans that there could be no
compromise with the enemy to the north.
Special operations? Look no further than the Seven
Years War of 1756 to 1763 and the Ranger unit raised by Robert Rogers that
engaged in the no-man's-land bordered by Lake George and Lake Champlain. The
Army's 75th Ranger Regiment traces its lineage to that outfit.
A military composed of mutually mistrustful citizen
soldiers and professionals? The tale of the Great Warpath includes the
disputes of leaders like Seth Warner, military leader of Vermont's Green
Mountain Boys, and Arthur St. Clair, British regular turned American
general, who attempted to impose on free citizens the professional
discipline and outlook of the British army at New York's Fort Ticonderoga in
1777.
War in the name of democracy? In 1775, the
rebelling colonies—not even yet the United States—launched an invasion of
Canada. The Continental Congress ordered the covert distribution of
propaganda pamphlets in what is now Quebec province. The opening line: "You
have been conquered into liberty." Congress subsequently sent Benjamin
Franklin north with a few companions to consolidate the conquest of
Montreal, spread parliamentary government, and familiarize the baffled
habitants of Canada—ruled for over a decade with mild firmness by a British
governor—with the doctrines of habeas corpus and a free press.
The American way of war is distinctive. If the
armed services have an unofficial motto, it is "Whatever it takes"—a mild
phrase with ferocious implications. All that those words imply, including a
disregard for military tradition and punctilio, the objective of dismantling
an enemy and not merely defeating him, and downright ruthlessness, can be
found in the battles of the Great Warpath.
It is often a paradoxical way of war. "Conquering
into liberty" sounds absurd or hypocritical. In the case of Canada, it
failed (though of course Canada took its own path to free government). In
the cases of Germany, Italy and Japan after World War II, it succeeded. In
the case of Iraq, who knows? In all of these episodes American motives were
deeply mixed—realpolitik and idealism intertwining with one another in ways
that even the strategists conceiving these campaigns did not fully grasp.
What matters is that the notion of conquering into liberty is rooted deep in
the American past, and in the ideas and circumstances that gave this country
birth.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
I don't agree that America will always do or has always done "whatever it takes"
to win a war. We clearly could've done more with weapons at hand to try to win
the Viet Nam war. We could've played dirtier by draining/poisoning more rice
patties, bombing in massive carpets over cities, and using more scary chemicals
of death. But to what end? Instead, I think in Viet Nam we simply lost our will
to win at all costs, although we may have achieved some objectives in our loss
in Viet Nam. Perhaps Russia and China would not be moving ever closer to
capitalism and peace with their neighbors if Viet Nam had not demonstrated the
risks of military conquest in a communism red-tide strategy to defeat the
Western world by force.
From Bryn Mawr College
Serendip [Often makes use of Flash Player] ---
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/
Born in 1994
First website on Bryn Mawr College
campus
Hosted the Bryn Mawr College website, c.
1995-96
Hosted the College Library's first
website
Over 4 million unique visitors in 2009
More than 26,000 pages
Averages more than
20,000 unique visitors per day
More than 99% of its visitors are from
off-campus
Home of
Center for Science in Society, 2001 - present
Hosted
College Diversity Conversations, c. 2004-06
Most popular exhibit:
Mind and
Body: Rene Descartes to William James
translated into Spanish and Russian
Significant exhibits from the last several
years:
Serendip's Exchange (2006- present)
Ant Colonies: Social Organization Without a Director (2006)
Exploring Emergence: The World of Langton’s Ant (2005)
Education and Technology: Serendip's Experiences 1994-2004
Thinking About Segregation and Integration (2003)
Hosted the first
Bryn Mawr College undergraduate course to welcome alumnae into
online discussion with current students (2007)
Notable Annual Milestones:
2007:
Serendip's new materials are now created in a Content Management
System (CMS), Drupal, which extends Serendip's interactivity and
functionality in significant ways. Almost all pages may be appended with
comments from any visitor from the web, and Serendip automatically
analyzes its own content and generates related links to relevant
material.
Serendip publishes an expanded
collection of
hands-on activities for teaching biology to middle school or high school
students, a project of Dr. Ingrid Waldron, faculty member in the
Biology Department of the University of Pennsylvania, and her
colleagues. There are now 23 interactive activities, and its home page
averages 400 visitors/day. The most popular downloads are currently
Is Yeast Alive and Mitosis and Meiosis. The collection is
the first search result in Google for the terms, teaching biology.
Serendip offers blog technology to K-12
teachers attending
summer institutes.
Serendip hosts the first
Bryn Mawr College undergraduate course to welcome alumnae into
online discussion with current students.
2006: Serendip
surpasses 3 million unique visitors in 2006.
Serendip becomes yet more expansive in
its outreach, publishing articles by and conversations with scholars in
art
history,
psychoanalysis,
philosophy of science,
writing,
geology and philosophy, among others. Interacting with and
publishing Serendip
readers' stories grows, and storytelling across the humanities and
sciences, as well as storytelling as a biological process is a major
focus.
Getting it Less Wrong evolves, and is quoted in the New York
Times, among other places on the web.
Serendip continues to develop
partnerships with two arts organizations, the
Wilma Theater in Philadelphia and the
Bryn Mawr Film Institute. Among several Wilma productions, Serendip
offers an online forum for Brecht's The Life of Galileo, and
Paul Grobstein is a panelist in a Wilma discussion series centered
around the play.
2005: Serendip partners
with Alice Lesnick (Education) at Bryn Mawr College to publish an online
book developed in an undergraduate Education course,
Empowering Learners: A Handbook for the Theory and Practice of
Extra-Classroom Teaching.
A sampling of
university courses around the world which use Serendip materials is
compiled.
Serendip surpasses 2 million unique
visitors in 2005.
2004: Serendip hosts
The Story of Evolution and the Evolution of Stories: Exploring the
Significance of Diversity, an undergraduate course taught by Anne
Dalke (English) and Paul Grobstein (Biology) at Bryn Mawr College, the
first undergraduate course that we are aware of that could be taken for
English or Biology credit.
Serendip publishes
Writing Descartes: I Am, and I Can Think, Therefore ... , an essay
by Paul Grobstein and an ongoing experiment in story sharing and story
evolution among many colleagues.
Serendip surpasses 1 million unique
visitors in 2004.
2003: Serendip's Home
Page changes to suggest different ways to navigate through Serendip's
more than 10,000 pages in a non-hierarchical fashion.
In teacher workshops, Philadelphia-area
teachers were encouraged to create their own web pages in the
"experimental sandbox," using wiki technology.
Serendip partners with Ray McDermott
(Stanford) and Herve Varenne (Columbia) to publish an online version of
Culture as Disability supplemented by online discussion.
Bob Jensen's links to scholarly sites
categorized by discipline ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Scroll down to the "Free Tutorials"
"Plagiarism, Profanity, Fraud, and Design,"
by Josh Keller, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 4, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/crosstalk-plagiarism-profanity-fraud-and-design/34119?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Plagiarism: A study of 24 million college papers by
Turnitin, which makes plagiarism-detection software, finds that
college students are
most likely to lift copy from Wikipedia, Yahoo Answers, and
Slideshare. The study counted all
suspiciously similar language and did not consider whether students
cited the sources they lifted from. Via the Scholarly Kitchen, where
Phil Davis
noted some of the study’s limitations.
Profanity: A Web site
promoting Oberlin College co-created by its social media
coordinator,
Why the F*** Should I Choose Oberlin?,
drew varied reactions and plenty of attention
last week. The site, which notes it is not officially affiliated
with Oberlin, collects profanity-laced quotes about why Oberlin is
great. Georgy Cohen
interviews the co-creator, Ma’ayan
Plaut, who says she has “tacit and unofficial approval” from her
boss. On Higher Ed Marketing, Andrew Careaga says his inner
15-year-old thought the site is brilliant, but his 51-year-old
“shook his jaded head.”
Fraud:
Educause offers advice on how colleges can
respond to a Dear Colleague letter from
the U.S. Department of Education that asks colleges to limit
student-aid fraud in online programs.
Design: Keith Hampson argues that good
design will play an increasingly important role
in the college student experience as college
move online. “Somehow, though, digital higher education—both its
software and content—has managed to remain untouched by good design.
Design is not even on the agenda,” he says.
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education
controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"Sex Matters: Gender and Prejudice in the Mutual Fund Industry," by Stefan
Ruenzi and Alexandra Niessen-Ruenzi, SSRN, October 13, 2011 ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1943576
Abstract:
We suggest customer based discrimination as one potential explanation for
the low fraction of females in the mutual fund industry. Consistent with
investors being prejudiced and stereotyping female fund managers as less
skilled, we find that female managed funds experience significantly lower
inflows. This result is obtained using market data as well as experimental
data. While we document some behavioral differences between male and female
fund managers, performance is virtually identical. This shows that rational
statistical discrimination can not explain the lower inflows into female
managed funds. Evidence based on an implicit association test conducted in a
laboratory setting supports the notion that there is prejudice against
females in finance.
"Gender Gaps in Higher Ed Around the World," Inside Higher Ed,
November 7, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2011/11/07/gender-gaps-higher-ed-around-world
Bob Jensen's threads on Controversial Issues in Affirmative Action ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#AffirmativeAction
Also search the AAA Commons for "Gender" ---
http://commons.aaahq.org/pages/home
AAA Members Only
"Lessons in Risk Management: A Broken Clock is Never Right -- It's Just
Broken," by Jim Peterson, re:TheBalance, November 7, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://www.jamesrpeterson.com/home/2011/11/lessons-in-risk-management-a-broken-clock-is-never-right-its-just-broken.html
And on a global scale since 2007, the road to
financial ruin has been littered with the reputational corpses of those who
mistakenly believed that the quants’ “value-at-risk” models and their
off-spring sufficed to support their portfolios of exotic financial products
– among them, Jimmy Cayne of Bear Stearns, Chuck Prince of Citi, Dick Fuld
of Lehman Brothers and most lately, Jon Corzine at MF Global.
Which is not to say that there is nothing at all to
learn from a clear-eyed acknowledgement of the limits on the knowable. But
more likely than an unexamined repetition of a maxim that is both
conventional and therefore probably wrong, let the inquiry seek wisdom from
the more humble perspective of the counsels of caution.
Continued in article
From CBS Sixty Minutes segment on November 6, 2011
"Jack Abramoff: The lobbyist's playbook" ---
Click Here
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57319075/jack-abramoff-the-lobbyists-playbook/?tag=contentMain;cbsCarousel
Jack Abramoff, the notorious former lobbyist at the
center of Washington's biggest corruption scandal in decades, spent more
than three years in prison for his crimes. Now a free man, he reveals how he
was able to influence politicians and their staffers through generous gifts
and job offers. He tells Lesley Stahl the reforms instituted in the wake of
his scandal have had little effect.
The following is a script of "The Lobbyist's
Playbook" which aired on Nov. 6, 2011.
Jack Abramoff may be the most notorious and crooked
lobbyist of our time. He was at the center of a massive scandal of brazen
corruption and influence peddling.
As a Republican lobbyist starting in the mid 1990s,
he became a master at showering gifts on lawmakers in return for their votes
on legislation and tax breaks favorable to his clients. He was so good at
it, he took home $20 million a year.
Jack Abramoff: Inside Capitol corruption How
corrupt is lobbying in Washington, DC? Enough to get "60 Minutes"
correspondent Lesley Stahl angry when she hears how Jack Abramoff bribed and
influenced legislators.
It all came crashing down five years ago, when Jack
Abramoff pled guilty to corrupting public officials, tax evasion and fraud,
and served three and a half years in prison.
Today he's a symbol of how money corrupts
Washington. In our interview tonight, he opens up his playbook for the first
time.
And explains exactly how he used his clients' money
to buy powerful friends and influence legislation.
Jack Abramoff: I was so far into it that I couldn't
figure out where right and wrong was. I believed that I was among the top
moral people in the business. I was totally blinded by what was going on.
Jack Abramoff was a whiz at influencing legislation
and one way he did that was to get his clients, like some Indian tribes, to
make substantial campaign contributions to select members of Congress.
Abramoff: As I look back it was effective. It
certainly helped the people I was trying to help, both the clients and the
Republicans at that time.
Lesley Stahl: But even that, you're now saying, was
corrupt?
Abramoff: Yes.
Stahl: Can you quantify how much it costs to
corrupt a congressman?
Abramoff: I was actually thinking of writing a book
- "The Idiot's Guide to Buying a Congressman" - as a way to put this all
down. First, I think most congressmen don't feel they're being bought. Most
congressmen, I think, can in their own mind justify the system.
Stahl: Rationalize.
Abramoff: --rationalize it and by the way we wanted
as lobbyists for them to feel that way.
Abramoff would provide freebies and gifts - looking
for favors for his clients in return. He'd lavish certain congressmen and
senators with access to private jets and junkets to the world's great golf
destinations like St. Andrews in Scotland. Free meals at his own upscale
Washington restaurant and access to the best tickets to all the area's
sporting events; including two skyboxes at Washington Redskins games.
Abramoff: I spent over a million dollars a year on
tickets to sporting events and concerts and what not at all the venues.
Stahl: A million dollars?
Abramoff: Ya. Ya.
Stahl: For the best seats?
Abramoff: The best seats. I had two people on my
staff whose virtual full-time job was booking tickets. We were Ticketmaster
for these guys.
Stahl: And the congressman or senator could take
his favorite people from his district to the game--
Abramoff: The congressman or senator uh, could take
two dozen of his favorite people from their district.
Stahl: Was all that legal?
Continued
Jensen Comment
Firstly, I was not aware that Jack Abramoff was such a mixed bag. Few lobbyists
wind up in prison, so Abramoff was among the worst of the bad influence peddlers
in Washington DC. And yet he claims, before getting caught, to be a deeply
religious man who gave 80% of his earnings each year to charity.
Secondly, like many con men (yes he did con/extort Representatives and
Senators to vote the way his clients paid him to get their votes), he claims
after being released from prison that he's hell bent on reforming both himself
and the system that he exploited.
What I found interesting is Abrarnoff's Number 1 recommendation for cleaning
up the system: Don't allow former Representatives and Senators to be
lobbyists. I might extrapolate a bit myself by not allowing former government
employees to work for government contractors such as when to executives in the
Department of Agriculture become highly paid employees or consultants to
agribusiness corporations.
What's sad is that nothing can probably stop the inbreeding and influence
peddling in Washington DC or the 50 state capitols --- whether it's influence
peddling for the right by megabanks or the left by megaunions.
Government is a piñata holding gifts for everybody with
a stick.
PS
In addition to your analogy, Jim, about a clock face with broken arrows being
correct twice a day, you might consider the arrow on a directional sign in the
middle of nowhere. The directional arrow always points toward somewhere as long
as the arrow is visible. When twisted, however, it points somewhere else. It can
either point toward the correct place or toward lots of incorrect places
depending on where you really want to go.
Also, you and I have both previously noted that recidivism is very high among
reformed fraudsters, perhaps almost as high as recidivism of pedophiles. Exhibit
A is Barry Minkow ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Minkow#Release_and_Short_Selling
"Most Expensive Colleges 2011," Bloomberg Business Week,
November 3, 2011 ---
http://images.businessweek.com/slideshows/20111025/most-expensive-colleges-2011/
Jensen Comment
The slide show controls in this slide show are not immediately obvious. Pass the
mouse over the right or left side of the picture to make navigation arrows
appear.
What's surprising is the number top media-ranked private universities on
academic criteria (US News, The Economist, Business Week, WSJ) that are
not in the Top 20. Perhaps the multi-billion-dollar endowment funds of those
more prestigious universities enable them to charge lower tuition rates than
some really expensive colleges and universities that have lower endowments and
lower academic standing ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#BusinessSchoolRankings
Except for Columbia University at Number 1 and Carnegie-Mellon at Number 9,
some of the other Top Ten most expensive universities are not so highly ranked
on other media rankings on other criteria. In fact a few in the Top Ten
high priced schools surprise me in terms of what they appear to charge for
tuition. I'm always suspicious of some private universities that charge very
high tuitions and give plentiful scholarships that seem to be more marketing
than academics. \
High School graduates are sometimes lured in by the biggest scholarship
offers they receive. It's a bit like inflated department store asking prices
that are frequently discounted by generous in-store coupons.
Others game for grades
Gaming for a High Grade Average on a Transcript (includes
a poem by Bob Jensen) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GamingForGrades
The for-profit universities are getting much more subtle and misleading in their online
marketing programs.
When you go to the site mentioned in the email message
below, it looks like a great site with the homepage listing of major
universities by state.
However, when you do a database search the bias of the site begins to show
through. For example consider the Wisconsin zip code 53039 to
search for an online undergraduate degree in accounting, all that appears is a
listing of for-profit universities. What about the much cheaper and much more
respectable online undergraduate accounting degree from the University of
Wisconsin system of state universities?
Next consider the Maryland zip code 20742 to search for an online undergraduate
degree in accounting, all that appears is a listing of for-profit universities.
What about the much cheaper and much more respectable online undergraduate
accounting degree from the University of Maryland system of state universities?
As a matter of fact you get the same subset of for-profit universities whether
you search for Wisconsin or Maryland.
It begins to look like this subset of for-profit universities is paying for this
site and giving very biased outcomes in searches for online degrees.
Next I ran a test searching for on-campus undergraduate accounting degrees for
both Wisconsin and Maryland. No listing is given for the cheaper and more
prestigious accounting degrees from the state-supported universities in those
states. Instead a listing of for-profit alternatives is presented.
Thus, these university search engines appear at first blush to be legitimate.
However, when you dig deeper you discover that the recommendations are only for
costly and less prestigious for-profit universities. I've no objection to them
marketing their degree programs. However, if they pretend to be full service in
the best interests of students, they should be including less costly and more
prestigious alternatives from state-supported universities. They should also be
listing alternatives from private non-profit universities in their search
engines.
Message received by Bob Jensen on November 1, 2011
Hi Bob,
I run an economics degree site called
http://www.economicsdegree.net.
Having been a college professor 11 years, I decided to make a website to
help future economics students pick the right school for them. I spent
some time earlier today looking through the resource links listed on your
site, and I thought you would like to know I found a broken link on this
page:
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
This is the broken link I came across:
http://www.accountingobserver.com/blog/
When you get a chance to fix this broken link, if you find an open
spot for a link to my site,
http://www.economicsdegree.net, I would
certainly appreciate it. I believe my site is one of the largest actively
maintained resources that lists every accredited school offering an
economics
degree.
Thank you :)
XXXXX
"Are Elite Colleges (not necessarily the most expensive) Worth It?" by Pamela Haag, Chronicle of Higher
Education, October 30, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Are-Elite-Colleges-Worth-It-/129540/?sid=cr&utm_source=cr&utm_medium=en
Kurt Vonnegut's son, Mark, wrote in his memoir The
Eden Express that the best thing about graduating from college is that you
can say what a pile of crap college is and "no one can accuse you of sour
grapes."
Mark attended Swarthmore College. I did too,
graduating in 1988. I got a Ph.D. from Yale seven years later. My education
might brand me as an "elite" today—the word has become an insult. But since
I didn't come from privilege, money, power, or connections, my story is a
variation of what we used to celebrate, not ridicule, as upward mobility.
In my high school, I was one of a few "highly
selective college" aspirants. My best friends and I went through the
Baltimore City public school system, attending one of the two remaining
historically single-sex public high schools in the country. Some of our
parents were connected to Baltimore's cultural institutions, such as The
Baltimore Sun, or to city politics, and it would have been gauche for them
to send their kids to private schools. So the student body of my high school
was an all-female microcosm of Baltimore—overwhelmingly African-American,
with a smattering of white and Asian-American students; a preponderance of
lower-middle-class students, with a smaller group of middle-class or
upper-middle-class urbanites. Rich kids were hard to come by.
In my junior year, I scored well on the PSAT's and
became a semifinalist for a National Merit Scholarship. That landed me on
mailing lists for glossy brochures from colleges where it's always a New
England autumn and the buildings look like castles and the students laugh in
small classes with animated professors.
Those brochures were so perfect. They captured some
genteel ideal of college that I'd internalized, even though it wasn't native
to my family. My parents were the first on both sides to attend college.
They valued a college education profoundly, but in the generic, not
according to what struck them as a snooty, then-germinal taxonomy of college
rankings.
It wouldn't be exaggerating to say that I fondled
those brochures. I looked forward to the mail every day, because my
potential future selves were crammed into that box, and I developed fleeting
crushes on them. I coveted Wellesley for a week or two, because I wanted to
be one of the pretty women congregating on the lawn under a Gothic clock
tower in a catalog photo.
In 1983 the admissions game was just beginning to
accelerate; it wasn't as ruthless or entrepreneurial as it is today. My best
friend E. and I were self-directed and intellectually precocious, and our
parents weren't overinvolved. I was my own tiger mother to myself, and my
parents correctly worried that my self-tiger-mothering was causing me a lot
of angst for questionable ends.
I worked hard, got SAT scores in the top 1 percent
in verbal and the top 20 percent in math, and I didn't take SAT prep
courses. We weren't expected to. I edited the newspaper, joined the honor
society, and so on, but played no sports. I took no Advanced Placement
classes (few, if any, were offered), although I excelled in the classes I
took, and I attended courses at the Johns Hopkins University during my last
year in high school. I saved money from my part-time job at a drugstore and,
with some help from my parents, spent a summer in France, where I studied at
the University of Strasbourg but mostly got entangled in social frivolity
with other Americans.
By today's standards I was an unremarkable
candidate. "We'd never get into Swarthmore today," my college friends say,
and they're probably right.
But I did get in. I was also accepted at Smith, and
I applied to only two other colleges, Brown and Yale, a preposterously
ambitious and meager list for students today. "We were so dumb" about
admissions, said E., years later. "Swarthmore was our safety school."
Brown was my first choice. It rejected me. And in a
cruel blurring of the large-versus-small-envelope rule, I learned by way of
a large envelope that I was wait-listed at Yale.
"Why don't you just go somewhere that wants you,"
my parents pleaded when it came time to make the big decision. My intensity
scared them. To them, one college was as good as another. They loathe social
airs, so they'd get no thrill out of saying, "My daughter's at Yale."
My high-school friends and I were tribally close.
Our last evening together, we said our goodbyes, aware that we were going in
different directions and wouldn't be together in this way again. My best
friends would be attending local colleges. As for E. and me, the next day we
were leaving for Swarthmore, our unwittingly arrogant safety school.
Some of those friends from high school and college
now have children themselves who are gearing up for the college-admissions
process. A persistent question comes up: Is it worth it? For those few who
can afford to pay full price, it hardly matters. For the talented but not
rich, it's an agonizing question.
Parents have different approaches. One mom doesn't
want to encourage her son to look at colleges in the $55,000-a-year range
because she simply can't afford them. Why should he try to get in, when it's
a moot point financially, she says. It's like sadistically dangling a
Christmas present he'll never get.
Another family's strapped financially, but they're
gunning for a few highly selective colleges anyway. The mother went to
Swarthmore, and revered her experience there, the intellectual intensity,
and the friends she made. She wants some of that magic for her daughter.
I loved Swarthmore, too, and I loved Yale even
more. The question isn't how much students like their elite colleges
(usually, they like them a lot). It's the hypothetical, with profound
real-life consequences, of teasing out the margin of difference: how much
more a child might reap from an elite, $55,000-a-year college over a
less-expensive college. What great things would happen at any college,
versus things that happen only because of some alchemy that truly is about
Stanford, or Princeton?
A few recent books (such as Richard Arum's
Academically Adrift and Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus's Higher
Education?) have called into question the college mystique. A study by the
economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger finds that going to a more selective
college makes little difference in future earning power once you take into
account students' inherent abilities. However, they did find that it
increased earnings significantly for low-income students, if not for
middle-class or affluent students, and for those whose parents did not
attend college at all.
However, that's a crass calculus to many aspirants
of highly selective colleges. They want to learn how to think, and be
challenged intellectually and creatively by classmates and professors. The
elite-college mystique is about minds more than paychecks.
But more than two decades of a weak job market in
the humanities and a bumper crop of Ph.D.'s mean that great professors with
stellar credentials, exciting minds, and high standards are competing
viciously to get jobs at "lower-tier" schools, where students can get BMW
professors for Kia tuitions.
At the same time, talented students compete for
spots in less-elite colleges. Liberal-arts programs that Arum flags as the
most intellectually successful, with more intense reading and writing
assignments, now exist at competitive honors programs nestled in affordable
state universities.
And isn't it a dubious assumption, in any case,
that the way to achieve the life of the mind, if that's truly the
elite-college dream, is on the campus? Matthew B. Crawford's Shop Class as
Soulcraft observes that "smart" people were once socially permitted to do
nonsedentary, nonprofessional jobs that wouldn't even involve a college
education, to say nothing of an elite one. Steve Jobs famously dropped out
of Reed after a semester, and the PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel is offering
kids fellowships not to attend college, but to develop innovative ideas
instead.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
There are a number of reasons why students may want to go to elite colleges if
they can both get into such colleges and afford such colleges without having to
impoverish themselves and their parents for a lifetime.
Firstly, elite colleges typically are easier in terms of grades. Something
like 80% of Harvard students graduate cum laude. Among the Ivy League
universities and colleges, the most concerted effort to combat grade inflation
is being conducted at Princeton where only half the students on average in
courses now get A grades. Much less attempt is being made elsewhere ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#GradeInflation
"The Truth About Harvard," by
Ross Douthat, The Atlantic, March 2005
He paused, flashed
his grin, and went on. "Nevertheless, I have recently decided that hewing to
the older standard is fruitless when no one else does, because all I succeed
in doing is punishing students for taking classes with me. Therefore I have
decided that this semester I will issue two grades to each of you. The first
will be the grade that you actually deserve —a C for mediocre work, a B for
good work, and an A for excellence. This one will be issued to you alone,
for every paper and exam that you complete. The second grade, computed only
at semester's end, will be your, ah, ironic grade — 'ironic' in this case
being a word used to mean lying —and it will be computed on a scale that
takes as its mean the average Harvard grade, the B-plus. This higher grade
will be sent to the registrar's office, and will appear on your transcript.
It will be your public grade, you might say, and it will ensure, as I have
said, that you will not be penalized for taking a class with me." Another
shark's grin. "And of course, only you will know whether you actually
deserve it."
Mansfield had been
fighting this battle for years, long enough to have earned the sobriquet
"C-minus" from his students, and long enough that his frequent complaints
about waning academic standards were routinely dismissed by Harvard's
higher-ups as the out-of-touch crankiness of a conservative fogey. But the
ironic-grade announcement changed all that. Soon afterward his photo
appeared on the front page of The Boston Globe, alongside a story about the
decline of academic standards. Suddenly Harvard found itself mocked as the
academic equivalent of Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, where all the
children are above average.
You've got to be unimaginatively
lazy or dumb to get a C at Harvard (less than 10% get below a B-)
Harvard does not admit dumb students, so the C students must be unimaginative,
troubled, and/or very lazy.
It doesn't help that Harvard students are
creatively lazy, gifted at working smarter rather than harder. Most of my
classmates were studious primarily in our avoidance of academic work, and
brilliant largely in our maneuverings to achieve a maximal GPA in return for
minimal effort.
"The Truth About Harvard," by Ross Douthat, The Atlantic, March 2005
This may be partly
true, but I think that the roots of grade inflation —and, by extension, the
overall ease and lack of seriousness in Harvard's undergraduate academic
culture —run deeper. Understanding grade inflation requires understanding
the nature of modern Harvard and of elite education in general —particularly
the ambitions of its students and professors.
The students'
ambitions are those of a well-trained meritocratic elite. In the
semi-aristocracy that Harvard once was, students could accept Cs, because
they knew their prospects in life had more to do with family fortunes and
connections than with GPAs. In today's meritocracy this situation no longer
obtains. Even if you could live off your parents' wealth, the ethos of the
meritocracy holds that you shouldn't, because your worth as a person is
determined not by clan or class but by what you do and whether you succeed
at it. What you do, in turn, hinges in no small part on what is on your
résumé, including your GPA.
Thus the professor
is not just a disinterested pedagogue. As a dispenser of grades he is a
gatekeeper to worldly success. And in that capacity professors face upward
pressure from students ("I can't afford a B if I want to get into law
school"); horizontal pressure from their colleagues, to which even Mansfield
gave way; downward pressure from the administration ("If you want to fail
someone, you have to be prepared for a very long, painful battle with the
higher echelons," one professor told the Crimson); and perhaps pressure from
within, from the part of them that sympathizes with students' careerism.
(Academics, after all, have ambitions of their own, and are well aware of
the vicissitudes of the marketplace.)
It doesn't help
that Harvard students are creatively lazy, gifted at working smarter rather
than harder. Most of my classmates were studious primarily in our avoidance
of academic work, and brilliant largely in our maneuverings to achieve a
maximal GPA in return for minimal effort. It was easy to see the classroom
as just another résumé-padding opportunity, a place to collect the grade
(and recommendation) necessary to get to the next station in life. If that
grade could be obtained while reading a tenth of the books on the syllabus,
so much the better.
Jensen Comment
Are elite colleges (not necessarily the most expensive) worth it?
Definitely even if you can only afford one semester before transferring
elsewhere?
They're worth it if only to prove that you were smart enough just to be
admitted.
And this entitles you to wear an elite college's logo for the rest of your life.
You don't have to put add the statement to your sweatshirt that you only lasted
for one term.
Of course there are reasons other than easy A grades to go to elite colleges.
Probably the most important advantage is networking among former students and
among current students who often remain friends and professional contacts for a
lifetime. Graduating from an elite college can open doors to both admission to
prestigious graduate schools (including medical schools), to industry, and
government. Aren't all the present U.S. Supreme Court justices graduates of Ivy
League universities?
Even dropping out of an Ivy League school can open doors. It probably says
more about you to have been admitted to these schools than to have graduated
from them.
Elite colleges are more apt to use their top researchers in the classrooms
than are some of the top state universities who are more apt to give even
lighter teaching loads to top researchers. Of course "lighter" teaching loads
can be defined in a number of ways. Elite university business and law schools
often limit the number of courses taught to one course per semester, but the
number of students in that course may be 100 or more. Secondly, elite schools
like the Harvard Business School require weekly term papers and essay
examinations that only professors are supposed to grade (not teaching
assistants). In the lesser universities, including flagship state universities,
professors having more than 20 students may be allowed to give multiple choice
examinations and not require term papers.
Elite Colleges. especially smaller elite colleges like Swarthmore ranked high
in prestige but not in research, are likely to have teachers for both education
and inspiration. This is not always the case for highly ranked research
universities that are not necessarily in the "elite" class in terms of teaching.
Thomas Toch and Kevin Carey, "Where Colleges Don't Excel," The Washington
Post, April 6, 2007; Page A21 ---
Click Here
Millions of anxious high
school seniors have been hearing from college admissions offices in recent
days, and if one believes the rhetoric cascading from campus administration
buildings, corporate headquarters and the U.S. Capitol, students lucky
enough to get acceptance letters will be entering the best higher education
system in the world.
Hardly a week goes by without a prominent
politician or business leader declaring America's advantage in the global
battle for brainpower, citing as evidence a study from Shanghai's Jiao Tong
University that
rates17 American universities among
the world's 20 best.
But those rankings are based
entirely on measures of advanced research, such as journal articles
published and Nobel Prizes won -- measures, that is, of the work that's done
mostly in graduate programs. And while advanced research is vital to the
nation's economic competitiveness, so is producing enough well-educated
workers to compete for the high-value jobs of the future.
Undergraduate students are going to make up
the bulk of those workers because only 13 percent of the nation's 17 million
students in higher education are at the graduate level. Yet a hard look at
our undergraduate programs suggests that when it comes to the business of
teaching students and helping them graduate, our universities are a lot less
impressive than the rhetoric suggests.
Seventy-five percent of high school graduates
go on to higher education, but only half of those students earn degrees. And
many of those who do graduate aren't learning much. According to the
American Institutes for Research, only
38 percent of graduating college seniors can successfully perform tasks such
as comparing viewpoints in two newspaper editorials.
And it's an open secret that many of our
colleges and universities aren't challenging their students academically or
doing a good job of teaching them. In the latest findings from the
National Survey of Student Engagement,
about 30 percent of college students reported
being assigned to read four or fewer books in their entire senior year,
while nearly half (48 percent) of seniors were assigned to write no papers
of 20 pages or more.
Ironically, our global dominance in research
and persistent mediocrity in undergraduate education are closely related.
Both are the result of the same choices. The 17 institutions atop the
Shanghai rankings are driven by professional and financial incentives that
favor research and scholarship over teaching. Funding from the federal
government, publish-or-perish tenure policies, and college rankings from the
likes of U.S. News & World Report all push universities and professors to
excel at their research mission. There are no corresponding incentives to
teach students well.
Take the U.S. News rankings. Ninety-five
percent of each college's score is based on measures of wealth, fame and
admissions selectivity. As a result, college presidents looking to get ahead
focus on marketing, fundraising and recruiting faculty with great research
credentials instead of investing their resources in helping undergraduates
learn and earn degrees.
This problem can't and shouldn't be fixed by
government regulation. Independence and diversity make our higher-education
sector strong, and that shouldn't change.
The way to drive higher education institutions
to stop ignoring undergraduates in favor of pursuing research is to provide
more information about their performance with undergraduates to the
consumers who pay tuition bills: students and their parents.
By investing in new ways to gauge the quality
of teaching and learning and by requiring taxpayer-subsidized colleges to
disclose their performance to the public, the federal government can change
the market dynamics in higher education, creating strong incentives for
colleges to produce the caliber of undergraduates we need to compete in the
global marketplace, incentives to make the rhetoric of being first in the
world in higher education a reality.
Thomas Toch and Kevin Carey are,
respectively, co-director and policy manager of Education Sector, a
Washington think tank.
Are elite colleges (not necessarily the most expensive) worth it?
Definitely even if you can only afford one semester before transferring
elsewhere?
They're worth it if only to prove that you were smart enough just to be
admitted.
And this entitles you to wear an elite college's logo for the rest of your life.
You don't have to put add the statement to your sweatshirt that you only lasted
for one term.
Gaming for a High Grade Average on a Transcript
(includes a poem by Bob Jensen) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GamingForGrades
Principles of Accounting is one of the
initial (Phase 1) open sharing courses from the State of Washington
Washington State Open Course Library ---
http://www.opencourselibrary.org/phase-1-courses
If you use a learning
management system you can import course materials for an entire course.
Course files are available for download in two formats on the SBCTC
Connexions page. We are grateful to Connexions for helping us share these
courses with the world.
Please note: Human Anatomy &
Physiology I/II will be available soon.
Role: Student
Bob Jensen's threads on free open sharing
lectures, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
"Popular Pearson Tutoring Programs Revamp by Offering ‘Adaptive Learning’,"
by Josh Fischman, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 1, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/popular-pearson-tutoring-programs-revamp-by-offering-adaptive-learning/33970?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
MyLabs and Mastering, tutoring software packages
from Pearson Education that are used in hundreds of college courses, are
getting their guts ripped out and replaced.
The company announced today that it was replacing
its own software with
new adaptive-learning programs that adjust the course to the student.
The new software, from a company called Knewton, has
interactive tutors that lead students through mastery of each skill, giving
short quizzes and offering additional help, such as explanatory text or
videos, tailored to each student’s needs. In large classes, students get
such help—or can skip concepts they know well—without asking the instructor
to intervene. And instructors get constant feedback on how particular
students are doing compared to the rest of the class, or even similar
classes at other institutions.
Pearson provides the content, and Knewton’s program
will control how it is delivered. (Instructors have the ability to set their
own priorities and add their own material.) The two companies plan to begin
beta testing this fall and to have programs ready for the fall semester of
2012.
Instructors greeted the news with a mix of
enthusiasm and concern that changes would harm a product that they already
like. “I’ve been very pleased with MyWritingLab,” said David A. Webster,
coordinator of development education at Marion Technical College, in Ohio.
“I hope they don’t break it!”
He teaches a course called “Preparation for College
Writing” and says his students do much better after working with the
software. But he also said that Knewton’s ability to customize help choices
sounded like a real improvement over the existing product.
Gary S. Buckley, a professor of physical sciences
at Cameron University, in Oklahoma, uses Pearson’s Mastering Chemistry and
Mastering Physics in introductory courses, and said that “now the software
doesn’t really pay attention to the individual student. Everyone gets the
same problems. So this sounds like a good change.”
Continued in article
"Harvard Grad Starts Math Museum Helped by Google, Hedge Funder," by
Patrick Cole, Bloomberg Business Week, November 1, 2011 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-01/harvard-grad-starts-math-museum-helped-by-google-hedge-funder.html
Bob Jensen's links to mathematics history, tutorials, videos, and free online
education and research materials ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
Bob Jensen's links to history, tutorials, videos, and free online education
and research materials in other disciplines---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
You get to download one Kindle book a month, with no due dates, free, if
you’re an Amazon Prime member and a Kindle owner.
"Amazon Lights the Fire With Free BooksL Today, Amazon unveiled
something radical: the Kindle Lending Library," by David Pogue, The New
York Times, November 2, 2011 ---
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/03/amazon-lights-the-fire-with-free-books/
Today, Amazon unveiled something radical: the
Kindle Lending Library.
You get to download one Kindle book a month, with
no due dates, free, if you’re an Amazon Prime member and a Kindle owner.
O.K., whoa.
First of all, Amazon Prime used to be a
free-shipping service. You pay $80 a year, and you get two-day free shipping
on anything you buy from Amazon. It was fine, I guess, for people who bought
enough stuff from Amazon to make it worth the fee.
But then something really weird happened. Amazon
decided to compete with Netflix’s movie-streaming service. It started
licensing more and more movies and TV shows — now 13,000 of them, which is
rapidly approaching Netflix’s library size. The price? Free, if you’re an
Amazon Prime subscriber.
What does free shipping have to do with streaming
movies? Beats me. But it must have been a delightful surprise to people
who’d signed up for Prime.
And now this. Free books, including New York Times
bestsellers, for the Kindle. If you’re an Amazon Prime member.
Free shipping, free movies, free books, for $80 a
year. What, exactly, is Amazon up to?
There has to be some master plan, because Amazon is
spending itself silly to pull this off. Because the offer is limited to
owners of Kindles — it doesn’t work if you use the Kindle service on an iPad,
for instance — it is intended to sell more Kindles.
Obviously, the notoriously e-terrified book
publishers wouldn’t sign off on Amazon’s free-book deal without a lot of
reassurance — and a lot of payments. And sure enough, Amazon says that these
free Kindle books aren’t really free. It’s paying publishers for the right
to distribute them.
“Titles in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library come
from a range of publishers under a variety of terms,” Amazon says. “For the
vast majority of titles, Amazon has reached agreement with publishers to
include titles for a fixed fee. In some cases, Amazon is purchasing a title
each time it is borrowed by a reader under standard wholesale terms as a
no-risk trial to demonstrate to publishers the incremental growth and
revenue opportunity that this new service presents.”
Wow. Amazon is actually buying e-books to give you
for free.
Continued in article
Also see ---
Click Here
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/amazon-announces-paid-lending-library/37107?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Jensen Comment
Amazon often sells hard copy old books for a penny plus reasonable shipping
charges. UPS just delivered an accounting classic (from 1979) to me for which I
paid a penny plus $3.95 shipping.
Bob Jensen's threads on free electronic literature ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Learning Management System (LMS) ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learning_management_system
"Freeing the LMS," by Steve Kolowich, Inside Higher Ed, October
13, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2011/10/13/pearson_announces_free_learning_management_system
Last year, the media conglomerate Pearson
controlled a shade over 1 percent of the market for learning management
systems (LMS) among traditional colleges, according to the Campus
Computing Project.
This year, Pearson is
taking aim at the other 99 percent.
In a move that could shake the e-learning
industry, the company today
unveiled a new learning management system that
colleges will be able to use for free, without having to pay any of the
licensing or maintenance costs normally associated with the technology.
Pearson’s new platform, called
OpenClass, is only in beta phase; the company does
not expect to take over the LMS market overnight. But by moving to turn the
learning management platform into a free commodity — like campus e-mail has
become for many institutions — Pearson is striking at the foundation of an
industry that currently bills colleges for hundreds of millions per year.
“I think that the announcement really marks
another, and important, nail in the coffin of the proprietary
last-generation learning management system,” says Lev Gonick, CIO of Case
Western Reserve University.
By providing complimentary customer support and
cloud-based hosting, OpenClass purports to underprice even the nominally
free open-source platforms that recently have been
gaining ground in the LMS market.
Hundreds of colleges have defected from Blackboard
-- whose full-service, proprietary platform has ruled the market for more
than a decade -- in favor of open-source alternatives that cost nothing to
license. But while the source code for these systems is free, colleges have
had to pay developers to modify the code and keep the system stable.
OpenClass can be used “absolutely for free,” says
Adrian Sannier, senior vice president of product at Pearson. “No licensing
costs, no costs for maintenance, and no costs for hosting. So this is a freehttp://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
r offer than Moodle is. It’s a freer offer than any other in the space.”
Outflanking the Market
Pearson, which sells a variety of higher-education
products and services, including textbooks, e-tutoring software and online
courseware, has had
success selling its own proprietary learning
management system, LearningStudio (formerly known as eCollege), to
for-profit colleges. But the company has made fewer inroads with the much
larger nonprofit sector. With OpenClass, Sannier says Pearson is taking aim
at “traditional institutions around the country where professors are the
ones making the decisions about what’s happening in their classrooms” — a
demographic that has long been Blackboard’s stronghold.
“Our intention is to serve every corner of that
instructor-choice marketplace,” says Sannier.
Pearson says it is taking a strategic cue from
Google, which offers its cloud-based e-mail and applications suite to
colleges for free in an effort to secure “mind share” among the students and
professors who use it. Like Google with its Apps for Education — with which
Pearson has partnered for its beta launch — the media conglomerate is hoping
to use OpenClass as a loss leader that points students and professors toward
those products that the company’s higher ed division sees as the future of
its bottom line: e-textbooks, e-tutoring software, and other “digital
content” products.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on the history of Learning Management Systems (also
called Course Management Systems) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm
Those partnerships between marketing firms and
private universities
The University of Scranton is a Jesuit university with quite a few online
programs ---
http://www.scrantonuniversityonline.com/
For example the online MBA program is billed as an online AACSB-accredited
online program. There are many AACSB schools now offering online masters degrees
in accounting and business.
I've no objection when AACSB-accredited onsite programs go online. What bothers
me somewhat is the " Deltak,
partnering" mentioned in a recent email message from a guy at Deitak.com. When
this becomes a way for for-profit online programs to advertise AACSB
accreditation through such "partnerships" I begin to worry somewhat.
For example, are full-time tenured faculty from the University of Scanton
teaching most of the courses in the online "partnership program?"
Is the AACSB putting these "partner programs" through the same re-accreditation
tests as the re-accredition hurdles for onsite programs?
Just wondering?
Bob Jensen's threads on online training and education programs are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
A Multiple Choice Test
"What's Your Fraud IQ? Do you know how to prevent fraud? Test your basic
understanding of ways to protect personal and corporate information," by
Dawn Taylor and Andi McNeal, Journal of Accountancy, November 2011 ---
http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/Issues/2011/Nov/20114391.htm
Bob Jensen's threads on fraud detection and prevention ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudReporting.htm
"Microsoft Builds Great Bing Web App, But Not For Windows Phone 7," by
John Mitchell, ReadWriteWeb, November 2, 2011 ---
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_builds_great_bing_web_app_but_not_for_wi.php
"Amazon’s Apple War Costs Investors $13 Billion as Net Misses," by
Danielle Kucera, Business Week, October 26, 2011 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-10-26/amazon-s-apple-war-costs-investors-13-billion-as-net-misses.html
"What Wikipedia Deletes, and Why," by Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of
Higher Education, October 26, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/what-wikipedia-deletes-and-why/33930?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, famously allows
anyone to write or revise its entries, and the history of each item is open
for anyone to review. Except for material that leaders of the effort
consider too “dangerous” to leave online.
The fine print of its stated practices notes that
in some cases, material is completely spiked from the record. Or, as the
policy reads: “a revision with libelous content, criminal threats or
copyright infringements may be removed afterwards.”
These total redactions are what a University of
Pennsylvania research team has been mining for the past year in the hopes of
shedding some light on what Wikipedia deletes forever and why. In 2010
redactions accounted for more than 56,000 of the 47.1 million revisions,
according to the research team.
The researchers, Andrew G. West and Insup Lee,
wondered what content on the enormously popular Web site could be so
troubling that Wikipedia administrators would decide to remove it forever.
“Wikipedia is at that paramount example of open-source transparency,” Mr.
Lee said. “So when you see them behaving in a nontransparent manner, you
want to see what motivates them to do this.”
Copyright infringement was the most common reason
Wikipedia stated for deleting material, Mr. West and Mr. Lee found.
The Wikimedia Foundation has been sued over
copyright and privacy issues in the past. While only 0.007 percent of page
views in 2010 to the English Wikipedia site resulted in content that was
later redacted, that’s enough to land the organization and its operators in
hot water. That’s why leaders of the encyclopedia refer to the material it
redacts as “dangerous content.”
“We’ve identified that on the surface these
copyright cases are the worst,” said Mr. Lee.
“The research goal for us is, how can we provide
some automated way to detect the problems so they can be removed
immediately?” Mr. West added. “It’s very difficult to stop people from
adding something, but we can find a way to get rid of it quickly.”
The difficulty in identifying instances of
plagiarism, the pair said, is evident in the numbers. Most “dangerous
content,” such as libel or invasions of privacy, is taken down within two
minutes, on average. But copyright-related issues stayed up for an average
of 21 days, they found.
Wikipedia’s leaders have recently increased the
number of people with the ability to permanently delete text, including
entries in the history pages. In May 2010, approximately 40 people held
these rights; now more than 1,800 people do, Mr. West and Mr. Lee said.
The larger work force has helped to reduce the
amount of dangerous content found on the site, the researchers said. But
humans alone won’t solve the problem in its entirety. Sometimes they even
introduce problems when trying to delete dangerous content and removing
beneficial revisions in the process, which the research team refers to as
“collateral damage.” This brings up the question, then, of who even gets to
make the call when something is dangerous content or not.
“For all the problems on Wikipedia,” Mr. West said,
“I feel strongly that the solutions have to be automatic in nature because
these attackers increasingly have these machines doing their bidding for
them.”
Continued in article
"Search Google and Wikipedia at the Same Time With Googlepedia:
Browser Add-on Instantly view Wikipedia articles for your Google searches," by
Danny Allen, PC World via The Washington Post, May 29, 2009 ---
Click Here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052703653.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Googlepedia ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Googlepedia
Bob Jensen's search helpers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Searchh.htm
"How to Read a Student Evaluation," by David D. Perlmutter,
Chronicle of Higher Education, October 30, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/How-to-Read-a-Student/129553/
Jensen Comment
What David does not elaborate upon is the negative side of what many instructors
do after reading student evaluations.
Sometimes they make the course easier in a race to please the bottom feeders
in the course.
And even if they don't make the course easier they start skewing course
grades higher to where median grades are A- or B+ on the theory that at least
those students above the median will not give harsh teaching evaluations.
The Number 1 disgrace in higher education is grade inflation, and studies
like those at Duke and Cornell show that student evaluations contribute heavily
to lax grading ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GradeInflation
"What Would You Have Done? Last week, I (Joe Hoyle) encountered a
problem with one of my students. I wasn’t sure what I ought to do so I turned to
my colleagues here at the Robins School of Business and emailed them a cry for
guidance," by Joe Hoyle, Joe Hoyle's Teaching Blog, October 28, 2011
---
http://joehoyle-teaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/what-would-you-have-done.html
Jensen Comment
I would probably not have sympathy for this student who overslept,
although there are problems for which I might be more sympathetic. What if the
student in question had instead had a car accident while driving to campus? What
if his wife decided to have her baby an hour before the scheduled examination?
What if there really was a freeway accident that caused an hour of gridlock?
Similar excuses and reasons that I listened to for 40 years go on and on and on.
An instructor can have similar reasons for not showing up for his/her
examination.
Instructors can allow for virtually all such excuses by giving make-up
examinations, but these can be unfair if gaming students are really just making
up excuses to get more time to study. I generally give make-up examinations with
an announced proviso that these examinations would probably be somewhat more
difficult. Life is tough!
I hate to make the retelling of an event at Michigan State sound humorous,
but many of my students and colleagues found it somewhat humorous at the time.
Firstly I should note that this was a very large tiered lecture room where I had
well over 100 students in managerial accounting during my first year as an
assistant professor (newly-graduated PhD and rather full of myself in terms of
what I expected from students). I gave a mid-term examination, and the student
in question was seated in the back row. There was a bit of commotion, early in
the examination, after one of my my teaching assistants unknowingly slipped out
of the room to call EMS. The Campus Police arrived very quickly with stretcher.
The ill student in question apparently scanned through my examination and
passed out. In the hallway the campus police apparently revived her and decided
that she had only fainted upon reading my examination. She was, however, in no
emotional condition to go back into the classroom and was later examined in the
Student Health Center. To make matters more complicated, she was a first-term
foreign graduate student from Turkey. She soon afterwards dropped my course.
I did give extra time for the remainder of this examination in case some
other students were distracted by the event in question.
I then faced the dilemma of what to do about factoring in this examination
into grades. I decided to give a make up examination that any student in the
course could elect to take on condition that the make-up examination would take
the place of the original examination. Students did not know their original exam
grades until after the make-up examination was given.
I became known for a time as a professor whose examinations were so shocking
that students passed out.
So what would I advise for in the case of a student who missed an examination
entirely?
My advice is to give a make-up examination that is bit harder than the original
examination (if this warning was posted in the syllabus in advance for
no-shows).
Then there's another problem of students who sleep or otherwise pass out
during examinations.
The fundamental problem in the classroom is in the proctoring process. No
examination proctor should allow s student to sleep through the entire
examination. Attempts should've been made to see if the student had a problem
greater than mere sleeping such as an epileptic incident, a hyperglycemia
attack, or whatever beyond merely waking up from sleep.
If the examination disruption is one of merely waking the student up, then
the examination should probably proceed --- "full speed ahead." If there is more
of a problem then a decision has to be made whether the incident has corrupted
the entire examination process, in which case a substitute examination may have
to be given later on. Of course this would he an even bigger problem during a
final examination where it becomes much more difficult to schedule substitute
examinations during final examination week.
I cannot recall having a really serious problem in 40 years of giving final
examinations. There were, of course, 40 years of problems with the students who
came in days later complaining about their final grades. But these are chronic
problems that I generally handled by being hard-nosed about grade changes unless
I had made an error in the grading process. An operations research professor
colleague, Fred Dorner, at Trinity University always kept a sign on his office
door after final examinations. The sign in huge letters simply read "NO"!
It 's very difficult to generalize a resolution of Joe Hoyle's problem
without setting a precedent for gaming students. It's best to put examination
rules into the course syllabus, but no professor can anticipate every possible
contingency in advance. I once had a student arrive very late for a final
examination. She'd gone to mass before the examination (to pray), and her Jeep
was stolen. In that case I stayed on late and let her take the examination. I
felt sorry for her afterwards. Firstly, her Jeep was never recovered (most
stolen vehicles in San Antonio are south of the Rio Grande in less than three
hours). Secondly her final examination did not in the least help save her from
the final grade.
A Frightening Tale of Gmail
"Hacked!" by James Fellows, "The Atlantic, November 2011 ---
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/11/hacked/8673/?single_page=true
Thank you Robert Walker for the heads up.
As email, documents, and almost every aspect of our
professional and personal lives moves onto the “cloud”—remote servers we
rely on to store, guard, and make available all of our data whenever and
from wherever we want them, all the time and into eternity—a brush with
disaster reminds the author and his wife just how vulnerable those data can
be. A trip to the inner fortress of Gmail, where Google developers recovered
six years’ worth of hacked and deleted e‑mail, provides specific advice on
protecting and backing up data now—and gives a picture both consoling and
unsettling of the vulnerabilities we can all expect to face in the future.
. . .
“I see that you’ve got it!” he said. “The zeal of
the convert. People in the business think about the risks all the time, but
normal people don’t, until they’ve gotten a taste of the consequences of
failure.”
I have now had that taste and am here to share the
experience. As with so many other challenges in modern life, responding with
panic or zealotry doesn’t get us anywhere. But a few simple self-protective
steps can save a lot of heartache later on.
October 31, 2011 message from John Howland
Bob, the Mike Jones in this article is a Trinity CS
grad. He has helped provide Google internships for our students.
Sent from my iPad
John E. Howland
url:
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~jhowland /
Computer Science email:
jhowland@ariel.cs.trinity.edu
Trinity University voice: (210) 999-7364
One Trinity Place fax: (210) 999-7477 San Antonio, Texas 78212-7200
October 29, 2011 reply from Linda Phingst
One of my main clients was subjected to this just
this past summer. Really read the emails coming to you, and be suspect of
anything that is not ‘good’ grammar. Yes, we all miss spell things, but
‘broken’ English is easy to spot. Main countries of origin are Russia and
Nigeria. FBI/Homeland Security is not even the little bit interested if the
scam is not Over 100K, they want the big fish. So it is up to us to be
smarter and more diligent.
Thankfully, it ‘only’ cost the client my time (n/c)
and about 7K in lost funds. They are working on retrieving that. My advice,
write it off to the experience account.
But Pay Pal is not all it’s is cracked up to be.
Forget the ‘safest, easiest way to pay’ it’s a joke. You have to buy more
‘security’ from Pay Pal, it does not come with the account. Unless you buy
additional security Pay Pal does not even check the name against the card
holder account. And they don’t tell you that when you sign up.
And there is no insurance offered for commercial
shopping cart scams.
If you come across a scam or are scammed report it
to the FBI at: https://tips.fbi.gov/ or http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx
Educate yourself on the latest scams at: http://www.fbi.gov/scams-safety/fraud
And they will aggregate them for $$/occurrence and
try to go after them.
Linda Pfingst, CPA
November 1, 2011 reply from Steve Hornik
Thanks Robert and Linda for bringing this up on our
list.
It's my belief that we need to be educating our students on this issue and
in that regard I've completely changed by Grad AIS course this semester.
For the first time the course is basically an IT Security course and
believe me the hacking article is just a little scary compared to other
issues once you start looking into this area. I used to go over with my
class the AICPA Top Technology Trends that they do each year, and if you
look at them,
http://www.aicpa.org/InterestAreas/InformationTechnology/Resources/TopTechnologyInitiatives/Pages/2011TopTechInitiatives.aspx
You see that each year for over a decade Security is
the #1 issue (or something related to security). Also of course compliance
with SOX, etc. makes this an important issue and knowledge that accounting
students should have. Of course I've always been a bit odd in what I've
taught and maybe a bit contrarian - I mean what's more important, that these
students know how to design an Access database or know where IT/Network
vulnerabilities exist, why they exist, and what can be in put in place to
help prevent hacks. As was clear in the article, a lot of protections,
starting with passwords, can be simple if only they are used properly. But
its amazing how often the simple stuff is just not done. During the 1st day
of the class I go over the HB Gary case with my students. This is a top
security firm, with government contracts that got hacked. Now you would
think that security companies are under attack all the time, and I expect
they are but this top security firm got hacked because they employed
incredibly weak to non-existent security - so if the one's being paid to
protect us, are not "drinking their own kook-aid" what are mere mortals
supposed to do? Here's a link to a great article explaining the whole sad
affair:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/anonymous-speaks-the-inside-story-of-the-hbgary-hack.ars/
By the way, if there are other crazy one's like me teaching this - let me
know. In my first crack at this I'm tending to do a lot of lecturing but
want to eventually move towards case studies and projects. So if anyone has
anything they'd like to share please do.
_________________________
Dr. Steven Hornik
University of Central Florida
Dixon School of Accounting
407-823-5739
http://about.me/shornik
Second Life: Robins Hermano
Twitter: shornik
http://mydebitcredit.com
yahoo ID: shornik
Bob Jensen's neglected threads on computer and networking security are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ecommerce/000start.htm#SpecialSection
"To Monitor Online Testing, Western Governors U. Gives Students Webcams,"
by Alexandra Rice, Chronicle of Higher Education, November 2, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/to-monitor-online-testing-western-governors-u-gives-students-webcams/34099
Welcome packets for students at Western Governors
University now include a free Webcam, part of an extensive monitoring
program used by the online university to make sure test-takers are who they
say they are.
At Western Governors, the average student is 36
years old, has a family, and takes a full course load on top of holding a
full-time job. Because it’s convenient for them to be able to take tests
from home, students have embraced the technology, says Janet W. Schnitz,
associate provost for assessment and interim provost at the university.
The university, which first started handing out
cameras in July 2010, now has over 30,000 Web cams in use.
Before 2009, when the university introduced its
Webcam pilot program, students had to go to one of 6,000 on-site assessment
centers to take a test. For many students, this could involve taking time
off work, securing a babysitter, and then driving several hours to the
center.
“Trying to get to different sites to take these
exams—that took up to four hours to complete—was quite onerous on the
students,” Ms. Schnitz said. “So we began looking for a secure environment
that would allow us to identify the student and provide a secure testing
environment that was more conducive to the lifestyle of our adult students.”
The camera, which is mounted on a stick, is not the
standard Web camera found on a computer. Standard Webcams, Ms. Schnitz said,
provide only a view of the student. With this camera, proctors can see the
computer screen, the students’ hands and profile, and a 180-degree view of
the room.
While the university is still working out some bugs
in the system, such as full compatibility with Apple products and issues
with satellite Internet connections, Ms. Schnitz says the transition has
been fairly seamless and beneficial for both the university and its
students. The system the university uses, known as Webassessor, was
developed by the online testing technology company Kryterion.
“The one thing I think that really helps us the
most is that they have full streaming and live proctors who are actually
watching the students during the entire testing event,” Ms. Schnitz said.
“We really felt that it was important that it not be viewed after the fact,
and that it be viewed during the actual testing.”
The idea behind the live proctor is twofold: to
have someone monitoring students and checking for any aberrant behavior and
also to have someone there in case a student has a technical issue.
Students’ dress is another issue the university is
still working out when using the cameras, Ms. Schnitz said. Before beginning
an exam, the student’s hair has to be pulled fully behind his or her ears to
make sure they don’t have any device feeding them answers. For some
students, such as those who wear headscarves for religious reasons, this can
present a problem. In those cases, the university can arrange for female
proctors or students can choose to take the test at one of the on-site
centers.
The university administers roughly 2,000 of the
10,000 tests it gives each month at physical testing centers, and the rest
through the Webcam system, according to Ms. Schnitz.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Since WGU is a competency-based university, instructors do not assign final
grades. This makes testing integrity doubly important since final grades are
based upon examination performance throughout the term.
Onsite Versus Online Education (including controls for online examinations
and assignments) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Assess.htm#OnsiteVersusOnline
My asymmetry when analyzing book reviews
When I see a five-star rating on a book review at Amazon or from some other book
vendor, I view it with skepticism as if the book reviewer is the book's author,
publisher-hired, or a close friend of the author. The one-star reviews are quite
another matter. Perhaps I should be more skeptical about the negative reviews as
well.
"Beyond the Star System: Analyzing Text Reviews Leads to Better Pricing,"
Business Schools from Financial Education, October 26, 2011 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub
Published: October 26, 2011 in Knowledge@Wharton
Online product reviews have become ubiquitous
-- but does the text of these critiques tell a story that a star system
can't? How does a consumer's definition of happiness affect buying habits?
Are stock options always the best way to encourage risk-averse CEOs to
invest in unpredictable but potentially value-creating projects? Can the
desire for one reward be fulfilled with another? Professors
Anindya Ghose,
Cassie Mogilner,
Christopher Armstrong and
Jonah Berger, respectively, examined these issues
-- and what they mean for business -- in recent research papers.
Beyond the Star System: Analyzing Text
Reviews Leads to Better Pricing
While consumers who shop in brick-and-mortar stores
typically are able to test and evaluate products before making a purchase,
that is harder to do in the online shopping world. Indeed, online shoppers
usually have to rely on word-of-mouth or user-generated product reviews to
guide their buying decisions.
The common belief is that by looking at those
product reviews -- both the star rating system plus the number of reviews
posted -- one can predict how well a product will sell. The impact on sales
of textual reviews -- i.e., the comments that users include along with their
star rating -- is often ignored.
Ghose, a professor at the Stern School of Business
at NYU and a visiting professor at Wharton, sees this as a waste of valuable
information. He and colleagues Nikolay Archak and Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis,
also at the Stern School, have published a paper in Management Science
titled, "Deriving
the Pricing Power of Product Features by Mining Consumer Reviews,"
in which they quantify the value of the text comments in the user-generated
reviews.
"The star rating system really doesn't tell me
much," says Ghose. "I can look at 10 different brands and they all have star
ratings of 4.5 or 5. That doesn't indicate the differences in people's
opinions of each individual product or each feature, even though all that
information -- long verbal descriptions about what the users liked and
didn't like -- is imbedded in their reviews."
Researchers using text-mining techniques and other
analysis have already come up with indicators of how positive or negative
the reviews are. "But prior work in text mining does not reliably capture
the pragmatic meaning of the customer evaluations; in particular, the
existing approaches do not provide quantitative evaluations of
product features," the authors write. Their research, they add, teases out
the economic impact of user-generated product reviews "by identifying the
weight that consumers put on individual evaluations and product features,
and estimating the overall impact of review text on sales."
Ghose and his colleagues looked at the sales and
reviews of digital cameras and camcorders on Amazon, focusing on those
product features most frequently discussed by consumers (rather than the
product descriptions provided by manufacturers). "With digital cameras,
someone could talk about the screen size, the battery life, the megapixel
resolution, the weight and so forth," says Ghose. "What we do is quantify
the value that each of these features has on final sales. The means to the
end is to look at the effect on pricing power. As pricing changes, sales
will change, too."
According to Ghose, their work is applicable to all
kinds of goods and services, ranging from hotels and clothes to restaurants
and cars -- "basically any product that has multidimensional attributes."
And it can be useful to everyone involved in online selling. For consumers
considering a specific product, "our analysis parses out which features
other users find most valuable, without those consumers having to tediously
go through hundreds of reviews. This reduces the cognitive costs for them at
a time when social media is exploding."
As for retailers and manufacturers, he adds, "we
can tell them, going forward, which features they should be emphasizing in
their next product design and where, for example, they should be putting
more of their R&D. For advertisers who have limited space in virtual real
estate, we can tell them which features they should advertise and highlight
the most."
The researchers' paper also offers insights to
search engine advertisers who rely on customer-generated opinions that
automatically create an online advertising strategy using the sponsored
search advertising model. For instance, the authors note, "our methods can
be [extended] to different product categories [where] firms [can] select the
appropriate keywords to bid in these advertising auctions that highlight the
most pertinent differentiating characteristics that consumers value."
Ghose offers an example. Suppose, for a given
product, that the phrase "excellent video quality" is associated with an
increase in sales three times greater than the phrase "great design." The
retailer or manufacturer would clearly be wise to choose a set of keywords
that are associated with the first phrase rather than the second, and bid
more on those keywords in paid search advertising.
Amazon, according to Ghose, is aware of their work,
as are several startups. If Amazon were to implement their approach, Ghose
says, it could be in the form of a drop down menu for the different product
features, letting consumers choose the ones they value the most. The site
would then summarize the best options available.
Continued in article
"Some Thoughts About Educause 2011, FOSS, and Experimentation (especially
open sharing), by George Williams, Chronicle of Higher Education,
October 25, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/thoughts-educause-2011/36881?sid=wc&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en
I spent much of last week attending the
2011 meeting of
Educause, an event devoted to information
technology in higher education.
Educause (the organization)
describes itself as a “nonprofit
association whose mission is to advance higher education by promoting the
intelligent use of information technology.” The annual meeting features
sessions and workshops but also an enormous exhibit hall where various
vendors promote their products, software and hardware alike. As
Jason and I wrote last year,
there is a great deal of money at stake in this
particular market. However much your average faculty member–or
administrator, or educational technology staff member–may support free and
open source software or the open educational resources movement, you’re not
very likely to see much about those things in the exhibit hall (though you
might hear a good bit about them in individual sessions and workshops).
As much as I enjoyed seeing the
Start-Up Alley at this year’s Educause I would also love to see a
section devoted to free and open source tools, just to get some of the
spirit of what’s going on in many of the sessions and
workshops elsewhere in the convention center into the exhibit hall. Yes, I
know that exhibitors pay to be able to stake out their position in the
exhibit hall. Still, when I came across
the Endnote booth I wanted to see a booth devoted
to
Zotero, the comparable
research tool developed
by the Center for History and
New Media that is not only awesome but also free
of charge. I longed to see a
Moodle booth next to
the space devoted to Blackboard. How many people attending Educause, I
wonder, have perhaps heard of a free and open-source product like
WordPress (about which
we’ve written a great deal here at ProfHacker) but
have never seen how easy it is to install and run? What kind of an impact
would it make on campus purchasing decisions if these tools were given more
prominence at meetings like Educause? I don’t claim to know the best way to
make that happen (or to persuade everyone to think that doing so would be a
good idea), but it’s what’s been on my mind the last several days.
I’ve often heard it said “Well, the software may be
free, but you’ll have to pay people to maintain it.” And to that my response
is, “We already employ those people. They currently spend their
time maintaining the commercial software our campuses have purchased. It’s
not going to increase our costs to eliminate the money we spend on
that commercial software.” I’d like to see more campuses open to the idea of
experimentation: don’t abandon your commercial LMS, but allow faculty to try
out other possibilities. (And how about we stop referring to this sort of
experimentation as
faculty “going rogue” and start referring to it as
faculty exercising academic freedom? We choose our own texts, we design our
own assignments, we construct our own syllabi, and we should be able to
choose our own educational technology, no?) Students won’t be as confused by
the resulting diversity of interfaces as is often feared. They do just fine
having to learn how to use different databases in the library or different
information resources out there on the Web. If enough faculty and students
find that they prefer free and open source tools to the ones you’ve been
paying for… then maybe you should stop paying.
Continued in article
Bob Jensen's threads on education technology ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm
"Why Do So Few Women Reach the Top of Big Law Firms?" by Timothy L.
O'Brien, The New York Times, March 19, 2006 ---
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/business/yourmoney/19law.html
Although the nation's law schools for years have
been graduating classes that are almost evenly split between men and women,
and although firms are absorbing new associates in numbers that largely
reflect that balance, something unusual happens to most women after they
begin to climb into the upper tiers of law firms. They disappear.
According to the National Association for Law
Placement, a trade group that provides career counseling to lawyers and law
students, only about 17 percent of the partners at major law firms
nationwide were women in 2005, a figure that has risen only slightly since
1995, when about 13 percent of partners were women.
Even those who have made it to the top of their
profession say that the data shows that women's legal careers involve
distinct, often insurmountable hurdles and that those hurdles remain
misunderstood or underexamined.
"You have a given population of people who were
significantly motivated to go through law school with a certain career goal
in mind," says Ms. Plevan, who notes that Proskauer has always provided her
with a welcoming professional home. "What de-motivates them to want to
continue working in the law?"
FOR years, one pat response to that question was
that once law school graduation rates substantially equalized between men
and women, that pipeline would fuel firm diversity and cause partnerships to
equalize as well. Yet the pipeline has been gushing for about two decades
and partnership disparity remains.
Although women certainly leave firms to become more
actively involved in child-rearing, recent detailed studies indicate that
female lawyers often feel pushed into that choice and would prefer to
maintain their careers and a family if a structure existed that allowed them
to do so. Some analysts and many women who practice law say that having
children isn't the primary reason most women leave law firms anyhow; most,
they say, depart for other careers or for different ways to practice law.
"Firms want women to stay. Men at the firms want
women to stay, and women want to stay. So why aren't they?" asks Karen M.
Lockwood, a partner at Howrey in Washington. "Law firms are way beyond
discrimination — this is about advancement and retention.
Problems with advancement and retention are
grounded in biases, not discrimination."
With law firms courting major corporations that
demand diversity within the ranks of those advising them, and with women
increasingly dominating the top tiers of law school graduates, veteran
lawyers say that promoting women's legal careers is not just a matter of
goodwill or high-mindedness. It's also a winning business strategy.
. . .
Research conducted by the Project for Attorney
Retention, a program sponsored by the University of California's Hastings
College of the Law, has also identified an inflexible, billable-hours regime
as an obstacle to job satisfaction for both sexes, a trend that is more
pronounced among the most recent crop of law school graduates. Some veteran
lawyers witness this dissatisfaction firsthand and say that it tugs more
powerfully at women than men because of social expectations about household
roles and child-rearing.
We are very accommodating with leaves and flexible
schedules, and even with that we still lose women," says Edith R. Matthai,
who founded a Los Angeles law firm, Robie & Matthai, with her husband in
1987. "I think the pressures on women from spouses, family, peers, schools
and others is huge.
"I think the real solution is a reassessment of the
role that women play in the family," adds Ms. Matthai, who is president of
the Los Angeles County Bar Association. "One thing we need is a sense of
shared responsibilities for the household and, most importantly, shared
responsibilities for taking care of the kids."
Ms. Matthai said that conditions for women had
improved a good deal over the last 30 years, but added: "We have a long way
to go. It's my dream that more women will stick it out in the law until they
get to the fun part, and it just breaks my heart to see them giving up the
dream."
Research conducted by the New York City Bar
Association and other groups indicate that women who temporarily give up
their professional dreams to pursue child-rearing or other personal goals
have a difficult, if not impossible, time finding easily available on-ramps
when they choose to re-enter the legal world.
Continued in article
"Why Female Engineering Students Are Discouraged," Inside Higher Ed,
October 26, 2011 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2011/10/26/why-female-engineering-students-are-discouraged
Women perform as well as men in engineering courses,
but are less likely to stay in the field because of a confidence gap,
according to research published in the new issue of
American Sociological Review. Women are less
likely to feel "professional role confidence," the study found, which has to
do both with their view of their own talent and also of their sense that
they are in the correct field. "Often, competence in engineering is
associated in people’s minds with men and masculinity more than it is with
women and femininity. So, there are these micro-biases that happen, and when
they add up, they result in women being less confident in their expertise
and their career fit," said the lead author of the study, Erin Cech, a
postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University’s Clayman Institute for Gender
Research.
Jensen Comment
There are some differences for women who choose accountancy as opposed to
engineering. Firstly, the large firms tend to hire more than 50% female among
the new graduates. A glass ceiling remains in terms of partnership attainment in
public accounting firms and their clients. However, I suspect the glass ceilings
are being cracked more in accountancy than in engineering. There's still a long
ways to go.
Women Partners in the Big 4 Accounting Firms
For the tenth consecutive year, Deloitte & Touche USA
LLP tops the Big Four accounting firms in percentage of women partners,
principals and directors, according to Public Accounting Report's 2006 Survey of
Women in Public Accounting. The survey revealed that Deloitte's percentage of
women partners, principals and directors is currently 19.3 percent, surpassing
that of KPMG (16.8 percent), Pricewaterhouse Coopers (15.8 percent) and Ernst &
Young (13.5 percent). Deloitte has held this lead every year since the inception
of the survey in 1997, according to Jonathan Hamilton, editor, Public Accounting
Report.
SmartPros, December 26, 2006 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x55948.xml
Women now make up more than 60 percent of all
accountants and auditors in the United States, according to the Clarion-Ledger.
That is an estimated 843,000 women in the accounting and auditing work force.
AccountingWeb, "Number of Female Accountants Increasing," June 2, 2006
---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=102218
Jensen Comment
Nearly 20 years ago, Deloitte embarked on a "Women's Initiative" to help female
employees break the glass ceiling ---
http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/section_node/0,1042,sid=2261,00.htm
ILLINOIS CPA SOCIETY'S 2007 SURVEY ON ACCOUNTING WOMEN
Recently at its Women's Leadership Breakfast, the
Illinois CPA Society (ICPAS) released the results of its fifth annual
"Accounting Women: 2007 Survey on the Role of Women in CPA Firms." The survey
found only slight shifts in hiring and retention patterns from the prior years'
figures and that women are still underrepresented in key leadership positions.
The survey, conducted through the Illinois CPA Society's Women's Executive
Committee, tracks the percentage of women in Illinois CPA firms at three levels:
senior/staff; senior manager/manager; and partner/principal. The 2007 survey
document was sent to 78 Illinois firms with 15 or more professionals. While the
percentage of women entering public accounting firms has decreased from 52
percent in 2004 to 49 percent in 2007, the number of women being retained at the
senior manager/manager and partner/principal levels has slowly climbed from 39
percent to 42 percent and 16 percent to 18 percent, respectively, over this same
period. Also, although the number of women in the most senior positions has
moderately increased, the number of men continues to far outweigh women in the
partner/principal positions.
Andrew Priest, AccountingEducation.com, June 2007 ---
http://accountingeducation.com/index.cfm?page=newsdetails&id=14498
"E&Y, PwC Top Employers for Working Mothers," SmartPros,
September 27, 2006 ---
http://accounting.smartpros.com/x54886.xml
Big Four accounting firms Ernst & Young and
PricewaterhouseCoopers are recognized as two of the best companies in the
U.S. for working mothers, according to an annual survey by Working Mother
magazine.
Both firms make an appearance in the magazine's top
10 of "100 Best Companies" list, which celebrates employers who are "head
and shoulder above the mainstream" with flextime plans, telecommuting,
fitness centers, health insurance for part-timers, and more.
Using five criteria -- flexibility, maternity and
paternity leave, elder care, child care and the number of women occupying
top jobs -- the top 10 are: Abbott Laboratories; Bon Secours Richmond Health
System; Ernst & Young LLP; HSBC USA Inc.; IBM Corp.; JPMorgan Chase & Co.;
Patagonia Inc.; PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP; Principal Financial Group, and
S.C. Johnson & Son Inc.
Continued in article
"For Female Faculty, a B-School Glass Ceiling: Work-life issues, lack of
mentorship programs, and sexual discrimination are preventing many women from
obtaining tenure and full professorships," by Allison Damast, Business
Week, August 8, 2011 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/business-schools/for-female-faculty-a-bschool-glass-ceiling-08082011.html
Bob Jensen's threads on the Glass Ceiling (and in some cases lack thereof
in CPA firms) are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/BookBob1.htm#careers
Bob Jensen's threads on higher education controversies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm
"MBA Moms Most Likely to Opt Out: A new study finds MBA
moms more likely than doctors or lawyers to stay home full-time," by Alison
Damast, Business Week, August 25, 2008 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/aug2008/bs20080821_739321.htm
This is mostly good news for behavioral experiment research in accountancy
"Uncertainties Dampen University Optimism Over Human-Subjects-Rule Revisions,"
by Paul Basken, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 26, 2011 ---
http://chronicle.com/article/Uncertainties-Dampen/129552/
Back in July, universities cheered the Obama
administration's announcement that it would ease rules governing the
approval and monitoring of federally financed research involving human
subjects.
Now that the institutions have had three months to
study the specifics,
their tone has turned more cautious, with universities worrying that a key
opportunity to lighten the regulatory burden on their research labs may be
slipping away.
"We like the intent of many of the proposals," said
Carrie D. Wolinetz, associate vice president for federal relations at the
Association of American Universities. "But ultimately," she said, the extent
of university support for the plan will depend upon "the details of the next
level of regulation that comes out."
The federal government provides more than
$30-billion a year for research at universities, most of it involving
medical care, and the government helps ensure patient safety by requiring
that work involving human subjects gains the approval of an ethics panel
known as an institutional review board.
The current regulations, known as the "Common
Rule," have been in place since 1991, when most medical trials involved
university settings and single locations. The proposed modernization
reflects an attempt to match a world in which tests of new drugs and medical
devices routinely occur in a variety of places, both public and private.
The suggested changes include making the
restrictions on a particular experiment involving human subjects more
closely tied to the expected risk, and allowing a single institutional
review board to set the policy for all the domestic sites of a single study.
The changes are also being driven by complaints
from nonmedical researchers, such as those conducting public-opinion
surveys, that their work has been needlessly entangled in a system intended
primarily to protect the health of participants.
The
proposed revisions were suggested by the Office
for Human Research Protections, the division of the Department of Health and
Human Services that administers the rules.
Concerns Over
Details
"We're very supportive of the revision of the
Common Rule generally," said Ms. Wolinetz, of the AAU. The association
issued its formal response to the government proposal, jointly with the
Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities, on Wednesday, the
deadline for public comments.
But the AAU and APLU described a series of worries,
including over the plan for placing control of a study under a single
institutional board. The goal is welcome, but the chain of command is
unclear, Ms. Wolinetz said. Universities, she said, could end up getting
"all of the responsibility with none of the authority."
Universities are especially pleased with the
proposed language that would exempt from review categories of research that
clearly have no effect on human health. But they're nervous about language
in the proposal that would allow for "retrospective audits" of studies in
which the institution or its review board has decided to exercise an
exemption, Ms. Wolinetz said.
"Institutions really don't like the idea of
retrospective audits," especially since the proposed rule change doesn't
clearly define how the audits would work and what penalties might be applied
in cases in which a federal agency might disagree with an exemption
decision, she said.
Altogether the Office for Human Research
Protections received more than 600 responses to its request for comments by
the deadline, which was extended by one month after groups that included the
AAU and APLU said they needed more time to contemplate the list of 74
detailed questions posed in the
agency's outline.
The agency's director, Jerry A. Menikoff, said he
fully anticipated concern among universities. The request for ideas is the
initial stage of the rule-making process, and "so by its very nature, many
things are vague," Dr. Menikoff said. "We very much intend to use the input
from the public comments to help us" draft the final rules, he said.
Support From
Historians
Some of the strongest praise for the proposed
changes has come from
university historians and social scientists eager
to have their work—often oral interviews that have no plausible connection
to the participant's physical or mental health—removed from the oversight of
institutional review boards.
And yet even advocates of that change recognize the
difficulty of precisely defining when exemptions should be allowed, as
endangerment of subjects can't always be anticipated. The University of
California system, in its comments to Dr. Menikoff's agency, gave an example
of how a participant in a study of HIV infection might be intimidated by the
police or face other repercussions, especially in some foreign countries,
merely as a result of being seen entering or leaving a study site.
Continued in article
"Kahneman: Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think," by Daniel Kahneman,
Bloomberg, October 24, 2011 ---
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-10-24/bias-blindness-and-how-we-truly-think-part-1-daniel-kahneman.html
Most of us view the world as more benign than it
really is, our own attributes as more favorable than they truly are, and the
goals we adopt as more achievable than they are likely to be. We also tend
to exaggerate our ability to forecast the future, which fosters
overconfidence.
In terms of its consequences for decisions, the
optimistic bias may well be the most significant cognitive bias. Because
optimistic bias is both a blessing and a risk, you should be both happy and
wary if you are temperamentally optimistic.
Optimism is normal, but some fortunate people are
more optimistic than the rest of us. If you are genetically endowed with an
optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person --
you already feel fortunate.
Optimistic people play a disproportionate role in
shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are inventors,
entrepreneurs, political and military leaders -- not average people. They
got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks. They are
talented and they have been lucky, almost certainly luckier than they
acknowledge.
A survey of founders of small businesses concluded
that entrepreneurs are more sanguine than midlevel managers about life in
general. Their experiences of success have confirmed their faith in their
judgment and in their ability to control events. Their self-confidence is
reinforced by the admiration of others. This reasoning leads to a
hypothesis: The people who have the greatest influence on the lives of
others are likely to be optimistic and overconfident, and to take more risks
than they realize. Optimistic Bias
The evidence suggests that an optimistic bias plays
a role -- sometimes the dominant role -- whenever people or institutions
voluntarily take on significant risks. More often than not, risk-takers
underestimate the odds they face and, because they misread the risks,
optimistic entrepreneurs often believe they are prudent, even when they are
not. Their confidence sustains a positive mood that helps them obtain
resources from others, raise the morale of their employees and enhance their
prospects of prevailing. When action is needed, optimism, even of the mildly
delusional variety, may be a good thing.
An optimistic temperament encourages persistence in
the face of obstacles. But this persistence can be costly. A series of
studies by Thomas Astebro shed light on what happens when optimists get bad
news. (His data came from Canada’s Inventor’s Assistance Program -- which
provides inventors with objective assessments of the commercial prospects of
their ideas. The forecasts of failure in this program are remarkably
accurate.)
In Astebro’s studies, discouraging news led about
half of the inventors to quit after receiving a grade that unequivocally
predicted failure. However, 47 percent of them continued development efforts
even after being told that their project was hopeless, and on average these
individuals doubled their initial losses before giving up.
Significantly, persistence after discouraging
advice was relatively common among inventors who had a high score on a
personality measure of optimism. This evidence suggests that optimism is
widespread, stubborn and costly.
In the market, of course, belief in one’s
superiority has significant consequences. Leaders of large businesses
sometimes make huge bets in expensive mergers and acquisitions, acting on
the mistaken belief that they can manage the assets of another company
better than its current owners do. The stock market commonly responds by
downgrading the value of the acquiring firm, because experience has shown
that such efforts fail more often than they succeed. Misguided acquisitions
have been explained by a “hubris hypothesis”: The executives of the
acquiring firm are simply less competent than they think they are. Risk
Takers
The economists Ulrike Malmendier and Geoffrey Tate
identified optimistic chief executive officers by the amount of company
stock that they owned personally and observed that highly optimistic leaders
took excessive risks. They assumed debt rather than issue equity and were
more likely to “overpay for target companies and undertake value-destroying
mergers.” Remarkably, the stock of the acquiring company suffered
substantially more in mergers if the CEO was overly optimistic by the
authors’ measure. The market is apparently able to identify overconfident
CEOs.
Continued in article
Jensen Comment
Things like this give mathematical economists, finance professors, and
accountics scientists nightmares that they tend to ignore by day. Personally, I
don't remember my dreams very often, although I'm almost always thrust into
frustrating situations like moving cars that lose their brakes, being lost at
night in a big city, being naked at a church wedding, and looking at a final
examination in a course that I forgot to attend during the entire semester.
Bob Jensen's threads on Accounting for the Shadow Economy
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#ShadowEconomy
Some of the older links below may be broken:
"Video: Daniel Kahneman - The Psychology of Large Mistakes and Important
Decisions" Simoleon Sense, July 27, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/daniel-kahneman-psychology-of-large-mistakes-and-decisions/
Speaker Background (Via Wikipedia)
Daniel Kahneman is an Israeli psychologist and
Nobel laureate, notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and
decision-making, behavioral economics and hedonic psychology.With Amos
Tversky and others, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human
errors using heuristics and biases , and developed Prospect theory . He was
awarded the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his work in Prospect
theory. Currently, he is professor emeritus of psychology and public affairs
at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.
Watch the video ---
Click Here
Video 1: "Nobelist Daniel Kahneman On Behavioral Economics (Awesome)!"
Simoleon Sense, June 5, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/video-nobelist-daniel-kahneman-on-behavioral-economics-awesome/
Introduction (Via Fora.Tv)
Nobel
Prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman addresses the
Georgetown class of 2009 about the merits of behavioral
economics.
He deconstructs the assumption that people always act
rationally, and explains how to promote rational
decisions in an irrational world.
Topics Covered:
1. The
Economic Definition Of Rationality
2.
Emphasis on Rationality in Modern Economic Theory
3. Examples of Irrational Behavior (watch this part)
4. How
to encourage rational decisions
Speaker Background (Via Fora.Tv)
Daniel
Kahneman - Daniel Kahneman is Eugene Higgins Professor
of Psychology and Professor of Public Affairs Emeritus
at Princeton University. He was educated at The Hebrew
University in Jerusalem and obtained his PhD in
Berkeley. He taught at The Hebrew University, at the
University of British Columbia and at Berkeley, and
joined the Princeton faculty in 1994, retiring in 2007.
He is best known for his contributions, with his late
colleague Amos Tversky, to the psychology of judgment
and decision making, which inspired the development of
behavioral economics in general, and of behavioral
finance in particular. This work earned Kahneman the
Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 and many other honors
Video 2: Nancy Etcoff is part of a new vanguard of cognitive researchers
asking: What makes us happy? Why do we like beautiful things? And how on earth
did we evolve that way?
Simoleon Sense, June 10, 2009
http://www.simoleonsense.com/science-of-happiness/
Video 3: Yale's Robert Shiller (slightly over one hour of video lecture)
Behavioral Finance: The Role of Psychology ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZLNbxWH8Lc
"Countries and Culture in Behavioral Finance," by Meir Statman ---
http://www.scu.edu/business/finance/research/upload/Countries-and-cultures-in-BF.pdf
Behavioral finance has made important contributions
to the field of investing by focusing on the cognitive and emotional aspects
of the investment decision-making process. Although it is tempting to say
that people are the same everywhere, the collective set of common
experiences that people of the same culture share will influence their
cognitive and emotional approach to investing. In this article, the author
discusses the many cultural differences that may influence investor behavior
and how these differences may influence the recommendations of a financial
advisor.
"Must Read: Why People Fall Victim To Scams," Simoleon Sense,
March 18, 2009 ---
http://www.simoleonsense.com/must-read-why-people-fall-victim-to-scams/
The paper is at
http://www.oft.gov.uk/shared_oft/reports/consumer_protection/oft1070.pdf
"Behavioral Finance: Theories and Evidence," by Alistair Byrne, CFA
University of Edinburgh Mike Brooks Baillie Gifford & Co. The Research
Foundation of the CFA Literature Review Institute ---
http://www.cfapubs.org/doi/pdfplus/10.2470/rflr.v3.n1.1?cookieSet=1
That behavioral finance has revolutionized the way
we think about investments cannot be denied. But its intellectual appeal may
lie in its cross-disciplinary nature, marrying the field of investments with
biology and psychology. This literature review discusses the relevant
research in each component of what is known collectively as behavioral
finance.
This review of behavioral finance aims
to focus on articles with direct relevance to practitioners of investment
management, corporate finance, or personal financial planning. Given the
size of the growing field of behavioral finance, the review is necessarily
selective. As Shefrin (2000, p. 3) points out, practitioners studying
behavioral finance should learn to recognize their own mistakes and those of
others, understand those mistakes, and take steps to avoid making them. The
articles discussed in this review should allow the practitioner to begin
this journey.
Traditional finance uses models in
which the economic agents are assumed to be rational, which means they are
efficient and unbiased processors of relevant information and that their
decisions are consistent with utility maximization. Barberis and Thaler
(2003, p. 1055) note that the benefit of this framework is that it is
“appealingly simple.” They also note that “unfortunately, after years of
effort, it has become clear that basic facts about the aggregate stock
market, the cross-section of average returns, and individual trading
behavior are not easily understood in this framework.”
Behavioral finance is based on the
alternative notion that investors, or at least a significant minority of
them, are subject to behavioral biases that mean their financial decisions
can be less than fully rational. Evidence of these biases has typically come
from cognitive psychology literature and has then been applied in a
financial context.
Examples of biases include
•
Overconfidence and overoptimism—investors overestimate their ability and
the accuracy of the information they have.
•
Representativeness—investors assess situations based on superficial
characteristics rather than underlying probabilities.
•
Conservatism—forecasters cling to prior beliefs in the face of new
information.
•
Availability bias—investors overstate the probabilities of recently
observed or experienced events because the memory is fresh.
•
Frame
dependence and anchoring—the form of presentation of information can
affect the decision made.
•
Mental
accounting—individuals allocate wealth to separate mental compartments
and ignore fungibility and correlation effects.
•
Regret
aversion—individuals make decisions in a way that allows them to avoid
feeling emotional pain in the event of an adverse outcome.
Behavioral finance also challenges the
use of conventional utility functions based on the idea of risk aversion.
For example, Kahneman and Tversky
(1979) propose prospect theory as a descriptive theory of decision making in
risky situations. Outcomes are evaluated against a subjective reference
point (e.g., the purchase price of a stock) and investors are loss averse,
exhibiting risk-seeking behavior in the face of losses and risk-averse
behavior in the face of gains.
Continued in article
Jim Mahar (a huge fan of Ayn Rand) uses some interesting behavioral finance
videos in his finance class ---
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-videos-we-will-be-using-in.html
We are covering the idea of charity or
altruism as rational or irrational. Now clearly
this idea of helping others is irrational is well established in some
circles. To start what is altruism? Let's
ask Google.
Now many economists have argued for years that it is
bad. For instance,
Ayn Rand in her writings and more recently from
the
Ayn Rand Institute.
Last week we ended class talking about
this video where the monkeys shared their gains
and acted in a manner that would be seen as uneconomic (giving away nuts,
caring about "fairness" etc). If you have not seen that video, I highly
recommend it. (oh and
please give me a juicy grape
:) ) So
cooperation
may be useful for the species.
Here is an
example not in an artificial setting.
The videos can be seen at
http://financeprofessorblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/some-videos-we-will-be-using-in.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Accounting for the Shadow Economy ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Theory01.htm#ShadowEconomy
"A Better Way Forward for State Taxation of E-Commerce," by David S.
Gamage and Devin J. Heckman, SSRN, October 25, 2011 ---
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1948792
Abstract:
We propose a novel solution for states that wish to
tax interstate e-commerce – based on fully and adequately compensating
remote vendors for all tax compliance costs. We argue that our proposed
solution is compatible with the Quill framework for when states can
constitutionally impose burdens on remote vendors. We argue that unlike our
proposed solution, the recent state attempts to tax interstate e-commerce
through so-called “Amazon laws” are unconstitutional, ineffective, or both.
We thus urge the states to adopt our proposed approach as the best way
forward for state taxation of interstate e-commerce.
Jensen Comment
This sounds more equitable at first blush, but it really is a complicated issue
for vendors like Amazon and LL Bean facing so many taxing jurisdictions and
having little say in the politics of states where they have no employees and
physical presence.
Firstly, it's complicated when a single decision to opt for collecting
out-of-state or out-of-country sales tax is a commitment for all customers for
all time. Online vendors will probably not choose this option on their own
accord.
Secondly, it's complicated since all the negotiating power appears to shift
from the online vendors to the state governments. State governments might set
very attractive "come on" rates of compensation that are very hard for vendors
to refuse like 50% of the sales tax collected. Then five years later after all
the software for collecting the sales taxes for 45 states and 147 other
countries is up and running, and without warning, the reimbursement becomes 40%.
then 30%, and eventually 0.00001%.
Most vendors like Amazon and LL Bean will probably see through the state
comeon tricks and will only capitulate when the U.S. Supreme Court declares that
they no longer have a choice. All it will take is one more Supreme Court
appointment by President Obama to make this a reality (in my opinion). I'm not
at all certain that state courts have the power to overturn the infamous LL Bean
case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
The problem for states is deciding when to have the U.S. Supreme Court take
up this vital case. I think they may be waiting for another liberal appointment
to replace a conservative U.S. Supreme Court justice. Of course there are a lot
of other cases awaiting that replacement. And with a more liberal Supreme Court
they may not have to share a penny of the collected tax with the online vendors.
From the Scout Report on October 28, 2011
Box ---
http://www.box.net/home/
Are you looking for a way to keep all of your
business records managed in one place? If so, you might want to try the
helpful Box application, as it is a rather elegant solution for such
matters. Visitors to the site can sign up to receive 5GB of web-storage,
mobile application access, and so on. The features of the application
include online workspaces where users can share information with colleagues
or outside clients. Visitors will also have the opportunity to post comments
and track file versions, along with having the ability to assign and manage
tasks. This version is compatible with all operating systems, including
Linux.
Twtrland ---
http://twtrland.com/
Who's checking out your Twitter feed? And how often
are you being retweeted? These answers and much more are provided for users
who take the time to look over Twtrland. Visitors can type in their Twitter
handle on this site and within a minute or two they can learn about their
most commonly used words or phrases, top followers, replies, photos, and
various check-ins. This version is compatible with all operating systems
As Halloween approaches, Salem prepares Halloween 2011: The Bewitching
Past and Present of Salem, Massachusetts
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/235702/20111021/halloween-2011-traditions-salem-witch-trials-haunted.htm
Mystery and irony in America's 'witch city', Salem
http://napavalleyregister.com/lifestyles/real-napa/mystery-and-irony-in-america-s-witch-city-salem/article_e869b4ec-fd09-11e0-b705-001cc4c002e0.html
Zombies v. witches: Who will win battle between bad and evil?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2051078/Zombies-v-witches-Who-win-battle-bad-evil.html
My View: Coming to peace with Salem's "Witch City' moniker
http://www.salemnews.com/opinion/x250778831/My-View-Coming-to-peace-with-Salems-Witch-City-moniker
Essex National Heritage Area ---
http://www.essexheritage.org/
Salem Maritime National Historic Site: Walking Tours [pdf]
http://www.nps.gov/sama/planyourvisit/brochures.htm#CP_JUMP_83949
From the Scout Report on November 4, 2011
PicsLikeThat ---
http://www.picslikethat.com/
Scrambling through the Internet for a particular
image can be time-consuming and tedious. PicsLikeThat offers a visually
delightful way to look for images that will be most useful. Visitors just
need to enter a search term into their search engine, and they will have a
grid display of relevant images returned to their computer screen. Visitors
can click on each result to find out more information about each image, and
they can also look for additional images based on certain characteristics,
such as color or shape. The interface is quite intuitive, and it's also a
bit fun. This version is compatible with all operating systems
TableDrum ---
http://www.tabledrum.com /
Do you like to drum? Well, if you have been
dabbling in a bit of drumming with your iPhone, this application may be just
what you are looking for. The application allows users to sync the sound of
just about any object to their iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch and link it to
high quality drum samples. The site has a helpful video to help first-time
users get started, and it's very easy to use. Users will need an iPhone 3GS
or later to use this application.
The X Prize Foundation issues a new challenge to the scientific
community
An X Prize for faster human genome sequencing
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/28/science/la-sci-venter-q-a-20111029
The X Prize Foundation: Now count to a hundred
http://www.economist.com/node/21534747
California Foundation Announces $10 Million Genetic Prize
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Calfornia-Foundation-Announces-10-
Million-Genetics-Prize-132802208.html
X PRIZE Foundation
http://www.xprize.org/
New England Centenarian Study
http://www.bumc.bu.edu/centenarian/
The Centenarian
http://www.thecentenarian.co.uk/
Free online textbooks, cases, and tutorials in accounting, finance,
economics, and statistics ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Education Tutorials
From Emory University
Study Skills Tip Sheets & Advice ---
http://www.college.emory.edu/home/academic/learning/studyskillsconsultations/tips.html
Assessment in Math and Science: What's the Point? ---
http://www.learner.org/resources/series93.html
Pathways to Science ---
http://www.pathwaystoscience.org/index.asp
NOVA: scienceNOW: Explore Teacher's Guides ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/educators/subject-anth.html
Knight Digital Media Center: Maps Tutorials ---
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/cat/maps
Google Map Maker
http://www.google.com/mapmaker
Oral History: Oregon State University Extension Service ---
http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/digitalcollections/extensionoralhistory/index.html
Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch
Engineering, Science, and Medicine Tutorials
Pathways to Science ---
http://www.pathwaystoscience.org/index.asp
Center for Science & Technology Policy Research ---
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/
NOVA: scienceNOW: Explore Teacher's Guides ---
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/educators/subject-anth.html
Teaching Institute for Excellence in STEM ---
http://www.tiesteach.org/
The Wisconsin Program for Scientific Teaching Digital Library http://scientificteaching.wisc.edu/library/
Secrets of the Sequence (DNA) ---
http://www.sosq.vcu.edu/
Assessment in Math and Science: What's the Point? ---
http://www.learner.org/resources/series93.html
Multimedia: de Young Museum ---
http://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/collections/multimedia
The Beauty of Pollination ---
http://www.youtube.com/v/xHkq1edcbk4?version=3
Royal Society Opens Online Archive; Puts 60,000 Papers Online
---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/10/royal_society_opens_online_archive_puts_60000_papers_online.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Point-of-Care Diagnostics for the Developing World (body fluid lab tests) ---
http://www.uwtv.org/video/player.aspx?dwrid=25882
ACDI/VOCA - Resources (worldwide agriculture and food) ---
http://www.acdivoca.org/site/ID/resources
Energy Map ---
http://energymap-scu.org/
Bob Jensen's threads on free online science,
engineering, and medicine tutorials are at ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Science
Social Science and Economics Tutorials
Point-of-Care Diagnostics for the Developing World (body fluid lab tests) ---
http://www.uwtv.org/video/player.aspx?dwrid=25882
ACDI/VOCA - Resources (worldwide agriculture and food) ---
http://www.acdivoca.org/site/ID/resources
Community Oriented Policing Services
http://cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=34
Miss America Protests, 1968 and 1969 (gender) ---
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/missamerica/
Labor Archives of Washington State ---
http://content.lib.washington.edu/lawsweb/index.html
The Labor Trail ---
http://www.labortrail.org/index.html
USC Digital Collections: WPA Maps ---
Click Here
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/browse.htm?summary=COLLECTION&mode=search&panelId=tree1Panel&collectionList=wpamaps&browseTitle=WPA+Maps&type=Collections
Oral History: Oregon State University Extension Service ---
http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/digitalcollections/extensionoralhistory/index.html
Bob Jensen's threads on Economics, Anthropology, Social Sciences, and
Philosophy tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Social
Law and Legal Studies
Labor Archives of Washington State ---
http://content.lib.washington.edu/lawsweb/index.html
The Labor Trail ---
http://www.labortrail.org/index.html
USC Digital Collections: WPA Maps ---
Click Here
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/browse.htm?summary=COLLECTION&mode=search&panelId=tree1Panel&collectionList=wpamaps&browseTitle=WPA+Maps&type=Collections
Community Oriented Policing Services ---
http://cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=34
Legal Aid Network of Kentucky
http://kyjustice.org/home
Bob Jensen's threads on law and legal studies are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Law
Math Tutorials
Assessment in Math and Science: What's the Point? ---
http://www.learner.org/resources/series93.html
"Harvard Grad Starts Math Museum Helped by Google, Hedge Funder," by Patrick
Cole, Bloomberg Business Week, November 1, 2011 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-01/harvard-grad-starts-math-museum-helped-by-google-hedge-funder.html
"Game Theory 101: an excellent introduction to game theory, and interview
with William Spaniel," Mind Your Decisions, 2011 ---
Click Here
http://mindyourdecisions.com/blog/2011/11/02/game-theory-101-an-excellent-introduction-to-game-theory-and-interview-with-william-spaniel/
Game Theory 101: an excellent introduction to game
theory, and interview with William Spaniel
People often ask me to recommend a book that gives
an introduction to game theory. Up until now I strangely did not have a
proper answer. Most books either have too little math and miss out on the
theory aspect, or they have way too much math and were just boring.
But today I am thrilled to say there is finally a
great game theory introduction that I can recommend. The e-book is called:
Game Theory 101: The Basics & Extensive Form
The book covers the basics of game theory,
including the Prisoner’s Dilemma, mixed strategy equilibrium, and it also
covers extensive form games (game trees) in which players move in sequence,
like the ultimatum game. There are tons of diagrams and lengthy discussions
to help you understand the concepts.
One of the remarkable things is how cheap the book
is. This ebook which has over 100 pages is selling for a mere $2.99 on
Amazon (there is also a lite version for $0.99 called Game Theory 101: The
Basics, but I would suggest the $2.99 version as it is more comprehensive
and suited for readers of this site).
Very important: while the book says it’s available
for Kindle, you don’t need a Kindle to read it. You can read the book on
your PC, Mac, iPhone, Android phone, or virtually any device by downloading
an appropriate Kindle reading app
Jensen Question
Is this $0.99 lite version a new feature from Amazon?
Hardly seems like a big savings on a $2.99 full text version.
In doctoral programs where game theory is only one module in a quant course,
this $2.99 book might be a good choice.
Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics
History Tutorials
"Harvard Grad Starts Math Museum Helped by Google, Hedge Funder," by Patrick
Cole, Bloomberg Business Week, November 1, 2011 ---
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-11-01/harvard-grad-starts-math-museum-helped-by-google-hedge-funder.html
Yale University Art Gallery ---
http://artgallery.yale.edu/pages/collection/buildings/build_trumbull.php
Click on "The Collection" for a menu
Pacific Historic Parks ---
http://pacifichistoricparks.org/
Documenting the American South: Oral Histories ---
http://docsouth.unc.edu/sohp/index.html
Digital Collections: Amherst College ---
https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/holdings/electexts
The Science of Vision and the Emergence of Art ---
http://www.webexhibits.org/colorart/index.html
Multimedia: de Young Museum ---
http://deyoung.famsf.org/deyoung/collections/multimedia
University of Miami Libraries Digital Collections: University of Miami
Archives (over 500,000 photographs) ---
http://merrick.library.miami.edu/digitalprojects/photographs.php
Knight Digital Media Center: Maps Tutorials ---
http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/cat/maps
The Blues (Martin Scorsese's PBS documentary series) ---
http://www.pbs.org/theblues/index.html
Labor Archives of Washington State ---
http://content.lib.washington.edu/lawsweb/index.html
The Labor Trail ---
http://www.labortrail.org/index.html
USC Digital Collections: WPA Maps ---
Click Here
http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/search/controller/browse.htm?summary=COLLECTION&mode=search&panelId=tree1Panel&collectionList=wpamaps&browseTitle=WPA+Maps&type=Collections
Bob Jensen's threads on history tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#History
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Language Tutorials
Bob Jensen's links to language tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Languages
Music Tutorials
The Blues (Martin Scorsese's PBS documentary series) ---
http://www.pbs.org/theblues/index.html
Digital Collections: Amherst College ---
https://www.amherst.edu/library/archives/holdings/electexts
1959: The Year that Changed Jazz ---
Click Here
http://www.openculture.com/2011/11/1959_the_year_that_changed_jazz_.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OpenCulture+%28Open+Culture%29
Bob Jensen's threads on free music tutorials are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Music
Bob Jensen's threads on music performances ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/music.htm
Writing Tutorials
Bob Jensen's helpers for writers are at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob3.htm#Dictionaries
Updates from WebMD ---
http://www.webmd.com/
October 27, 2011
October 28, 2011
October 29, 2011
October 31, 2011
November 1, 2011
November 2, 2011
November 3, 2011
November 4, 2011
November 5, 2011
November 7, 2011
November 8, 2011
November 9, 2011
November 10, 2011
November 11, 2011
Point-of-Care Diagnostics for the Developing World (body fluid lab tests)
---
http://www.uwtv.org/video/player.aspx?dwrid=25882
ASPARTAME
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspartame
Jensen Comment
ASPARTAME does some bad things to some people. I have a very close friend who's
addicted to Diet Cokes and had attacks of not being able to walk or talk. His
doctors ran all sorts of tests for MS and other fearful diseases. But the cause
was apparently an allergy to Aspartame. His life has been normal since getting
off of Aspartame. He still drinks a lot of Diet Coke, but he only buys the kind
that has no Aspartame.
It would seem, however, if all the bad things that are attributed to
Aspartame are true, the FDA would've banned it years ago. According to Snopes
many of these claims that Aspertame is the cause of cancer, brain tumers and
multiple sclerosis are false ---
http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/aspartame.asp
Having said this, however, there are many dangers of diet drinks in general
that are less scary. One of the real problems is that diet drinks can increase
appetite. And there are some people who have varying degrees of allergies to
diet drink ingredients like aspartame.
My problem in life is that rum just does not taste good without the Coke or
Diet Coke. But I now limit myself to one Cubalibra per week instead of one per
day. It's not so bad to put variety into my one drink of the day --- Sunday
Scotch and Perrier, Monday Gin with three olives, Wednesday an Old
Fashioned, Thursday a Manhattan, Friday a Margarita, and Saturday a Cubalibra
(with real coke and a squeezed lime). I vary my routine with Cognac more often
in wintertime. I don't drink much wine except at dinner parties. Wine often
leaves me with a headache the next day. I never did care much for beer after the
first two swallows.
My trusted online medical reference is WebMD. Here's what WebMD has to say
about the Best and Worst Beverages for Weight Loss ---
http://www.webmd.com/diet/ss/slideshow-skinny-sipping
My consolation about my alcohol consumption is that I only have one drink a
day (very often less). Alcohol is probably the main reason I cannot get under
200 pounds. Yeah right!
There are some responsibilities that should not be left to graduates
Parents Question Misspelled 'School' Sign ---
http://www.local10.com/traffic/29609914/detail.html
Tee Party Signs ---
http://blogs.seattleweekly.com/dailyweekly/2010/03/the_10_funniest_teabonics_sign.php
Remember
Too ear is humane, To foregive is Davine
Tidbits Archives ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Click here to search Bob Jensen's web site if you have key words to enter ---
Search Site.
For example if you want to know what Jensen documents have the term "Enron"
enter the phrase Jensen AND Enron. Another search engine that covers Trinity and
other universities is at
http://www.searchedu.com/
Find a College
College Atlas ---
http://www.collegeatlas.org/
Among other things the above site provides acceptance rate percentages
Online Distance Education Training and Education ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm
For-Profit Universities Operating in the Gray
Zone of Fraud (College, Inc.) ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#ForProfitFraud
Shielding Against Validity Challenges in Plato's Cave ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTAR.htm
-
With a Rejoinder from the 2010 Senior Editor of The Accounting Review
(TAR), Steven J. Kachelmeier
- With Replies in Appendix 4 to Professor Kachemeier by Professors
Jagdish Gangolly and Paul Williams
- With Added Conjectures in Appendix 1 as to Why the Profession of
Accountancy Ignores TAR
- With Suggestions in Appendix 2 for Incorporating Accounting Research
into Undergraduate Accounting Courses
What went wrong in accounting/accountics research?
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#WhatWentWrong
The Sad State of Accountancy Doctoral
Programs That Do Not Appeal to Most Accountants ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#DoctoralPrograms
AN ANALYSIS OF THE EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH
CONTRIBUTIONS BY THE ACCOUNTING REVIEW: 1926-2005 ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/395wpTAR/Web/TAR395wp.htm#_msocom_1
Bob Jensen's threads on accounting theory
---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm
Tom Lehrer on Mathematical Models and
Statistics ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfZWyUXn3So
Systemic problems of accountancy (especially the
vegetable nutrition paradox) that probably will never be solved ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudConclusion.htm#BadNews
World Clock ---
http://www.peterussell.com/Odds/WorldClock.php
Facts about the earth in real time --- http://www.worldometers.info/
Interesting Online Clock
and Calendar
---
http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf
Time by Time Zones ---
http://timeticker.com/
Projected Population Growth (it's out of control) ---
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/worldpopulation.htm
Also see
http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/P/Populations.html
Facts about population growth (video) ---
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMcfrLYDm2U
Projected U.S. Population Growth ---
http://www.carryingcapacity.org/projections75.html
Real time meter of the U.S. cost of the war in Iraq ---
http://www.costofwar.com/
Enter you zip code to get Census Bureau comparisons ---
http://zipskinny.com/
Sure wish there'd be a little good news today.
Free (updated) Basic Accounting Textbook --- search for Hoyle at
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
CPA Examination ---
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cpa_examination
Free CPA Examination Review Course Courtesy of Joe Hoyle ---
http://cpareviewforfree.com/
Rick Lillie's education, learning, and technology blog is at
http://iaed.wordpress.com/
Accounting News, Blogs, Listservs, and Social
Networking ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/AccountingNews.htm
Bob Jensen's Threads ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Online Books, Poems, References,
and Other Literature
In the past I've provided links to various types electronic literature available
free on the Web.
I created a page that summarizes those various links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm
Some of Bob Jensen's Tutorials
Accounting program news items for colleges are posted at
http://www.accountingweb.com/news/college_news.html
Sometimes the news items provide links to teaching resources for accounting
educators.
Any college may post a news item.
Accountancy Discussion ListServs:
For an elaboration on the reasons you should join a
ListServ (usually for free) go to http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
AECM (Educators)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/aecm/
AECM is an email Listserv list which
provides a forum for discussions of all hardware and software
which can be useful in any way for accounting education at the
college/university level. Hardware includes all platforms and
peripherals. Software includes spreadsheets, practice sets,
multimedia authoring and presentation packages, data base
programs, tax packages, World Wide Web applications, etc
Roles of a ListServ ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/ListServRoles.htm
|
CPAS-L (Practitioners)
http://pacioli.loyola.edu/cpas-l/
CPAS-L provides a forum for discussions of
all aspects of the practice of accounting. It provides an
unmoderated environment where issues, questions, comments,
ideas, etc. related to accounting can be freely discussed.
Members are welcome to take an active role by posting to CPAS-L
or an inactive role by just monitoring the list. You qualify for
a free subscription if you are either a CPA or a professional
accountant in public accounting, private industry, government or
education. Others will be denied access. |
Yahoo
(Practitioners)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xyztalk
This forum is for CPAs to discuss the activities of the AICPA.
This can be anything from the CPA2BIZ portal to the XYZ
initiative or anything else that relates to the AICPA. |
AccountantsWorld
http://accountantsworld.com/forums/default.asp?scope=1
This site hosts various discussion groups on such topics as
accounting software, consulting, financial planning, fixed
assets, payroll, human resources, profit on the Internet, and
taxation. |
Business Valuation
Group
BusValGroup-subscribe@topica.com
This discussion group is headed by Randy Schostag
[RSchostag@BUSVALGROUP.COM] |
Many useful accounting sites (scroll down) ---
http://www.iasplus.com/links/links.htm
Bob Jensen's Sort-of Blogs ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New
Bookmarks ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called
Tidbits ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud
Updates ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Some
Accounting History Sites
Bob Jensen's
Accounting History in a Nutshell and Links ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/theory01.htm#AccountingHistory
Accounting
History Libraries at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
The above libraries include international accounting history.
The above libraries include film and video historical collections.
MAAW Knowledge Portal for Management and Accounting ---
http://maaw.info/
Academy of Accounting Historians and the Accounting Historians Journal ---
http://www.accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aah/
Sage Accounting History ---
http://ach.sagepub.com/cgi/pdf_extract/11/3/269
A nice timeline on the development of U.S. standards and the evolution of
thinking about the income statement versus the balance sheet is provided at:
"The Evolution of U.S. GAAP: The Political Forces Behind Professional
Standards (1930-1973)," by Stephen A. Zeff, CPA Journal, January 2005
---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/105/infocus/p18.htm
Part II covering years 1974-2003 published in February 2005 ---
http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2005/205/index.htm
A nice
timeline of accounting history ---
http://www.docstoc.com/docs/2187711/A-HISTORY-OF-ACCOUNTING
From Texas
A&M University
Accounting History Outline ---
http://acct.tamu.edu/giroux/history.html
Bob
Jensen's timeline of derivative financial instruments and hedge accounting ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudRotten.htm#DerivativesFrauds
History of
Fraud in America ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/415wp/AmericanHistoryOfFraud.htm
Also see
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm
More of Bob Jensen's Pictures and
Stories
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/Pictures.htm
All
my online pictures ---
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/PictureHistory/
Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob)
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
190 Sunset Hill Road
Sugar Hill, NH 03586
Phone: 603-823-8482
Email:
rjensen@trinity.edu