Shocializing
By Kevin
Trash the Bag
Shopping, contrary to what economist might think, is a social affair. Purchasing decisions are not exactly made independently but often with reference to the purchases of friends and people around you. And that's why The Economist thinks that a third generation kind of websites are going to turn e-commerce into a more 'real' shopping experience.
On other issues, video games appears to train people to make faster decisions. They're said to be better with collecting bits of information and data (visual and audio) around them to aid them with decision making. It's perhaps one more good excuse for you to start gaming. My advice though, is that you leave the gaming to those times when you're especially stressed but have absolutely nothing to do - such as waiting for an important result, decision, during the days between papers when you've already studied so hard and with nothing more to study. Spend those times when you're bored learning something and thinking up routines for yourself to complete.
Changing Physical Laws
By Kevin
Gravity don't suck there?
There exists a fascinating and mysterious number in science known as the Fine Structure Constant whose identity as a 'constant' is put into question by a recent finding in the cosmos.
The fact that this unit-independent constant links up several important constants of physical laws and therefore represents most of the physical laws in the universe as we know implies that if it varies, the physical laws across the universe is not consistent (putting their identity as 'laws' into question as well). Ever in search of mathematical elegance, the idea of such a constant is really beautiful but the implications of this new finding isn't exactly known. As far as we know, a slight deviation of the Constant from what it is as measured could mean that life as we know would not exists. Nevertheless, the deviation discovered is way less significant.
Don't expect to be able to float in an atmosphere bubble or bend light with your bare hands yet.
The Ricardian
By Kevin
Nope, he's a businessman
Students doing A Levels Economics should totally take a look at The Ricardian, a magazine written by students doing Economics at A Levels at the Tiffin School. It's an electronic journal on Yudu so just access it here.
The quality of writing is pretty high and it's good for students who are still unable to adapt to the tougher style of The Economist. The design of The Ricardian is obviously inspired by The Economist with short elegant titles on the front page and a simple column design for its contents page. The individual page headers and the location of the page numbers closely resembles that of The Economist.
It a wonder why Singapore JCs often have the 'GP Bulletins' from top JCs (though nowadays they no longer bother to publish them nicely in a booklet form and decide to mass photocopy poorly formatted Word Documents instead) but not some sort of 'Economics Bulletin' that offers Economics tidbits with model essays as well as analysis of questions, issues or topics. Perhaps, the A Levels economists thinks this would be better left to the free market. That's why Mind Lever Education came up with 'Insights' for JC students, an even more awesome JC Economics magazine centered on A Levels Economics. For those who are willing to barter money for good knowledge materials, this magazine is available at some of the Popular Bookstore Branches.
Khan Academy
By Kevin
I was introduced to Khan Academy by Fortune Magazine. It is an amazing story, an amazing project.
The videos on his website spans topics on Mathematics, Sciences and some investment/banking related stuff. The target audience is going to range from high school students to the people in college. Being an undergraduate-to-be, I'm glad to have stumbled on his site. You too, should take a look.
Khan Academy is a recipient of the 2009 Microsoft Tech Award in Education:
Think Questions
By Kevin
Think, then Ask
Writers often draw or attract the attention of reader by posing interesting questions which they then seek to explain in their writing content. But then how about the readers? Could they also pose questions for themselves or other readers so that they make the reading experience a little more active?
So when you're reading, you might like come up with interesting questions that will lead readers to those articles. Here are some attempts of mine:
Article 1: Does drinking water make you slimmer? Even when you maintain food intake?
Article 2: Is spying on your spouse going to keep him/her faithful?
Article 3: Are corporate giants necessarily clumsy innovators?
This activity helps you identify key interesting elements of an article that you think is worth highlighting and then forces you to come up with a means to attract people's attention to it. In this case, you can only use a question out of your toolkit (which might include graphics, data charts, a different font colour or font size). A question draws attention through it's interaction with mental processes and thinking rather than through visual content and so is much more difficult at times.
The question trains you to draw your attention towards interesting areas of a topic you might not exactly be particularly interested in and then, you may see it in a different light.
Economics Fiction
By Kevin
Finding way through...
It never ever occurred to me that one could write an entertaining fiction out of economics concepts. There's something so compelling about basic economics and the way it appeals to pragmatism and common sense that it'd be boring and mundane to package it into a story for the layman. Interesting conclusions of economics about reality is constantly featured in the popular economics books that are in the market nowadays but it's difficult to entertain people with economics in fiction.
Yet there are economics professors who manage the feat. I first stumbled on The Fatal Equilibrium by 'Marshall Jevons' because it was on my university course reading list but failed to find a copy of the book in Singapore so I set out to find out if 'Marshall Jevons' wrote something else. Eventually I discovered that happened to be the pseudonym of two economics professors, William Breit and Kenneth G. Elzinga who decided to collaborate on a series of detective novels that featured the use of economic reasoning to solve crimes. I laid my hands on a copy of 'Murder at the Margin' from the Central Public Library and went on to finish it within 3 days. It was an easy read for me and while it wasn't fast-paced, the fact that it was a mystery novel kept me reading on, though not with the same sort of enthusiasm reserved from the works of Dan Brown.
Eventually it was entertaining and a rather enjoyable read. The duo also wrote 'A Deadly Indifference', which at present, is the final work of economics fiction they've done together. Then I went on to discover that other works of economics fiction actually exists; including that of John Kenneth Galbraith, 'A Tenured Professor' which mocks more than it promotes Economics as it is. This novel deals much less with Economics concepts than those of Marshall Jevons. Russell Roberts also published another narrative that's more centered on economic concepts, titled 'The Invisible Heart'. The sample chapter offered does seem pretty interesting.
I always briefly considered I'd try and imagine how a Homo Economicus will function or think in our reality and write a book about it but then I thought it'd be too boring. A fiction work on economics should ideally be like these rather successful novels - a strong dose of cerebral stuff woven into reality.
GP Resources
By Kevin
More to Write now...
Besides General Paper by the GP tutor from VJC, there's actually other blogs featuring GP resources such as While I Read, I Write and "General Paper Essays". Whether it's by teachers or students, it is always great to have someone point out resources available for your studying so you don't have to go into so much trouble with finding them. It is also good to see the works that other people are sharing just to get inspired if not as a model for your own writing.
There's also a GP Wiki and for people who needs extra help for Economics, there's actually a Economics Wiki for you too. Of course, when you need the variety of different subjects and a focal point for academic and intellectual resources, you should still be here at ERPZ.
Essay Writing
By Kevin
Get Cracking!
ERPZ comes up with advice about writing now and then; earlier I looked into my writing styles following advice from The Economist. Kwang Guan did a piece on adjectives, and for advice on writing Personal Statement, it's also helpful to look out for stuff applicable for normal writing as well.
For my friends who're going back to university and trying to write good, generic essays, here's some key points about essay writing that's really important. Hopefully, it'll be useful especially to the boys who are entering university only after two years of National Service and feeling dumber.
1) Cut down on needless adjectives
2) Vary sentence lengths
3) Focus on the topic at hand, don't allow yourself to stray
Yup, writing is that simple.
Chart Play
By Kevin
I learnt about Google Charts API quite a while back but didn't quite found time to explore it. I had wanted to use it to create charts to showcase certain data trends on ERPZ so that I don't have to generate Microsoft Office graphics to be uploaded. For my experiment, I decided to use the same data set for the distance fares to generate a chart using the Google Charts API. I took the following that I used in the previous entry:
Adult Bus Fares MC curve (By MS Office)
Using the wizard provided by Google and then tweaking the codes a bit here and there, I managed to create the following:
Adult Bus Fares MC curve (By Google)
It actually looks great and I guess in future, when I need to present any data on ERPZ, I'll be using this API.
Learning By Examples
By Kevin
Matching Context
Materials on ERPZ are often more focused on delivery of concepts; in particular, our current set of notes in the Economics Section deals largely with the theories and concepts covered in the syllabus and not so much on how to tackle your exams. Essays requires additional skills typically not covered in your lecture notes or textbooks. You could learn them from model essays but it would be better if you build up a style for yourself.
I'll be writing quite a few entries on essay-writing for Economics, which can also be applied to other social sciences at A Levels. I'll start off with an emphasis on examples. The school usually only teach you how to do half of your essay - the conceptual part. And if you don't explain and illustrate (diagrams for) your concepts particularly well, then you can't even get a pass. The other part of your essay has to do with application, which really means explaining in context and giving examples tailored to the context.
When dealing with a question that asks about market structures in Singapore; perhaps one requiring you to cite an example of a oligopoly. You could talk about the hypermarkets or supermarkets but you have to define them carefully and describe the correct players:
Examples of Players
Hypermarts (Giant, Fairprice Extra, Carrefour)
Supermarkets (Cold Storage, Fairprice, Sheng Siong)Why Oligopoly?
Hypermarts and Supermarts compete on prices and promotions, enjoy large economies of scale from marketing (bulk purchase, advertising, transport) and are usually anchor tenants at various shopping malls. Their mutual interdependence is reflected in attempts to market their house brands during recessions and also trying to differentiate by positioning themselves slightly different. Cold Storage goes for the 'sophisticated but affordable' image while Fairprice going for the 'simple and affordable' image; of course, Sheng Siong targets majority of the households looking for cheap deals.
Within the Singapore market, there are also other shops dealing in the same sort of 'industry' as the hypermarkets and supermarkets so one needs to be careful when discussing them. It is important that you look into the scale of the market you're hoping to discuss about. If you're thinking about just a large neighbourhood or area; then players may actually be engaged in monopolistic competition rather than oligopoly.
Examples of Players
ECONS Mini-market & Neighbourhood Provision ShopsWhy Monopolistic Competition?
Compete based on niche markets, providing specialized services (eg. Home delivery by provision shops) and benefit from relatively inelastic demand for necessities.
Do not confuse the different market structure; be clear about the scale of the market you're discussing and think about the players. For localized competition, the players could be specific outlets or stores; but then for a grander scale market, the players would be the group (like with chain-stores and lots of outlets). The explanation on why each of these examples would fit into your concept or theoretical framework is extremely important. Saying stuff like 'most markets in Singapore are Oligopoly, for example the Telecommunications industry' will not be a clear demonstration of your depth of thought. To give your essay more rigour you have to describe the competitive behaviours of the firms in the industry and give examples of actual marketing campaigns or events.
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