Monday, March 21, 2005
Hypothetical Question:
Let us hypothesize that you knew a person who was well into a PhD program in Economics, and was doing moderately well, but realized after a year or so that he/she had talents which lended themselves better to a different field, say... political science. Furthermore, let us assume that this person realized increasingly that economics as a field was perhaps too entrenched in mathematics to be reasonably understood by any but fellow PhDs in the same subfield of economics, and that our hypothetical friend had a passion for communicating relevant material to the layman, a task which would be only questionably useful when 90% of an economists work has no relevance to interesting questions. Let us go one step further and hypothesize that this person realized that their test scores were higher than average for people entering the university of Chicago political science program, which is in the top five, while this person was in an economics program ranked somewhere around 30.
What should this person do?
To even out the question, let us also include the possibly relevant information that this person does not want to spend the rest of their life in grad school, and that political science PhD programs take 5-7 years to complete, and that this person has a wife and aspirations to raise a family. Finally, this poor conflicted student is still in love with the discipline of economics, even though the stuff he is doing is not relevant to what he wants to do with the rest of his life.
If you have an answer, feel free to comment, I find thought experiments like this to be extremely helpful at times.
Let us hypothesize that you knew a person who was well into a PhD program in Economics, and was doing moderately well, but realized after a year or so that he/she had talents which lended themselves better to a different field, say... political science. Furthermore, let us assume that this person realized increasingly that economics as a field was perhaps too entrenched in mathematics to be reasonably understood by any but fellow PhDs in the same subfield of economics, and that our hypothetical friend had a passion for communicating relevant material to the layman, a task which would be only questionably useful when 90% of an economists work has no relevance to interesting questions. Let us go one step further and hypothesize that this person realized that their test scores were higher than average for people entering the university of Chicago political science program, which is in the top five, while this person was in an economics program ranked somewhere around 30.
What should this person do?
To even out the question, let us also include the possibly relevant information that this person does not want to spend the rest of their life in grad school, and that political science PhD programs take 5-7 years to complete, and that this person has a wife and aspirations to raise a family. Finally, this poor conflicted student is still in love with the discipline of economics, even though the stuff he is doing is not relevant to what he wants to do with the rest of his life.
If you have an answer, feel free to comment, I find thought experiments like this to be extremely helpful at times.
Tuesday, March 08, 2005
We Got A Digital Camera
As you may be able to tell. This is a sample of our first attempt at photography with this new toy. Wish us luck as we photograph everything in sight.
We have tried numerous times to photograph birds at our feeder, but those pesky little things keep flying away. And when they do sit still, it is hard to get the lighting right. With a little luck and practice, however, we will get some shots of the birds found in NC which do not venture further north.
As you may be able to tell. This is a sample of our first attempt at photography with this new toy. Wish us luck as we photograph everything in sight.
We have tried numerous times to photograph birds at our feeder, but those pesky little things keep flying away. And when they do sit still, it is hard to get the lighting right. With a little luck and practice, however, we will get some shots of the birds found in NC which do not venture further north.
