2007/08 EC102

I am teaching five classes this year. My timetable for this subject is:

Lectures (I’ll be attending them, not giving them!)
Monday, 11:00-12:00, Peacock Theatre
Tuesday, 12:00-13:00, Peacock Theatre

My Classes
Thursday, 09:00-10:00, H208, Group 6
Thursday, 12:00-13:00, S067, Group 3
Thursday, 14:00-15:00, K105, Group 2
Thursday, 15:00-16:00, K105, Group 4
Thursday, 17:00-18:00, Z232, Group 5

My Office Hours (changed)
Tuesday, 11:00-13:00, S169 (that’s the first floor of St. Clement’s Building)

A few relevant links:

• The official timetable
• The official course homepage
• WebCT
• Approximate assessment criteria for Problem Sets in the Economics Department (economics is at the bottom)

A few extra thoughts:

Since a lot of the exam is comprised of multiple choice questions (MCQs), a couple of thoughts on dealing with them are in order:

• You will not get marks taken off for a wrong answer, just zero for that question (i.e. there is no negative marking). This means that you should put an answer down for every multiple choice question, even if it’s a complete guess. This point is particularly important for any Indians in the audience.
• When you can’t work out the correct answer to an MCQ, try to at least rule out some of the options. Guessing with a 1 in 3 chance is much better than guessing with a 1 in 5 or 6 chance.

You do not have to do the questions in the order that they are presented. I personally tend to attempt the questions worth the most first. For EC102, that means the short-answer stuff first, then the high-value MCQs, then the low-value MCQs. Doing the low-value stuff early is tempting, but it’s easy to waste time on them.

There will be questions on the exam that you stare at blankly with no clue how to start (trust me). When that happens, don’t let it get you flustered and don’t waste time freaking out over it. Just move on to another question and come back to it. Examiners can be really mean sometimes - I have found that they often put a really tricky question or two very early in the exam. If you just do the exam starting at the beginning, it can totally sap your self-confidence if you hit those tricky questions in the first five minutes.

Make sure you get plenty of sleep on a regular basis over the next few weeks. It will become very, very tempting at some point, if you’re not there already, to stay up studying until well past midnight. That can be valuable if you’re making some real progress, but 9 times out of 10 you’d be better off getting a good night’s sleep and starting fresh in the morning. Changing your sleeping pattern almost always comes with inordinately large doses of caffeine. While a little is fine (I’d die if I didn’t get a coffee when I first got to uni and another just after lunch), make sure that you don’t over do it and never drink any coffee, coke, redbull, etc. within four or five hours of when you want to sleep. You might get to sleep, but it won’t be as restful, which means that what you covered that day won’t sink in as well.

On the morning of the exam, make sure that you plan to arrive at least an hour before the exam starts. If the exam starts at 10am, I plan to be on campus by 8:45am at the latest. The reason is two-fold: a) You cannot trust the Tube and Buses to be 100% reliable - imagine turning up to your tube station on the day to discover that it’s closed; and b) Once you’re at uni, you can spend the last half-hour or hour before the exam going for a walk (Lincoln’s Inn court is great) to calm yourself and focus.

Try to write clearly. The first part of this is easy: use capital letters (’A', ‘B’, ‘C’ …) for your answers to MCQs. Here’s why:

• There is not much difference between the letters ‘a’ and ‘d’ when they’re written by hand, but ‘A’ and ‘D’ are clearly different
• There is not much difference between the letters ‘c’ and ‘e’ when they’re written by hand, but ‘C’ and ‘E’ are clearly different
• If you’re over-vigorous with your ‘c’ and the two ends join up, it might look like an ‘a’, while ‘C’ and ‘A’ are distinct

On the short-answer questions, remember that whoever marks your exam will also be marking dozens of other exams. Reading largely similar answers to the same questions over and over again can get dull. I’m not saying that the marker will gloss over your answer - they will read all of it - but if your writing is messy you just increase the probability that they will misunderstand what you’re trying to say.

Make sure that you label everything on your diagrams - axes, curves, shifts of curves, movement along a curve, all of it.

More often than not on the short-answer questions, the dream-magic-perfect-wonderful answer includes diagram(s), maths (algebra) and an English-language description of what is going on. Just giving me six equations only tells me that you can regurgitate the lecture notes, not that you understand them. Just an English-language description with no graph or mathematics makes me wonder if you can do the maths.

You can take a water bottle into the exam. I usually sneak in a small packet of biscuits (Oreos!) for a sugar hit half-way through. The invigilators won’t mind.

Going to the toilet is a huge drain on your extremely valuable time in the exam. Go beforehand.

The exam for EC102 is on Wednesday, the 21st of May at 10am. It will be three (3) hours long.

I have changed my office hours. They are now from 9am until 11am 11am until 1pm on Tuesdays in S684 S169.

Make sure that you attend all of the revision lectures. Iain Long will be presenting 10 revision lectures, each two hours long and each on one of the major topics of the course. If there is something you would like him to cover, post your question to the discussion board on WebCT.

The following are a few of my thoughts thoughts on preparing for economics exams in general and EC102 in particular. I must stress that they are not official. For “official” hints and tips, see the “Exam FAQ” topic in the WebCT discussion area and go to the revision lectures.

Now …

An exam is just a hoop the university makes you jump through to prove that you can progress to the next level. Although the examiners would like it to be a complete test of your understanding of (and your ability to apply) the concepts, it can never be that. Therefore, for the purposes of the exam, especially any mathematics or economics exam, focus on the problems rather than the lecture material. In the long-run the problems are there to help you understand the material; but for the exam, the lecture notes are there to help you solve the problems.

My personal strategy for my own studying (I have exams this year too!) is this:

For each “broad topic”:

• Do one brief read through the notes, but don’t spend too much time memorising or understanding every last detail. You’re looking for a basic refresh of your memory from throughout the year. You will be referring back to your lecture notes in more detail soon enough anyway.
• Go through all the problems (the quizzes, the problem sets, the sample exams) in that “broad topic” as follows:
  1. First, attempt the questions without looking at the notes or the solutions. Try to attempt all of the questions in the “broad topic” in one hit.
  2. Second, for those questions you just had no clue on, try again with the lecture notes, but not the solutions.
  3. Finally, go through all the questions with the solutions and make sure that you understand them.
• Then repeat all of that (except for the reading of the notes) over and over and over again until your brain leaks out of your ears. Make sure to take regular breaks.

Make sure that you are very familiar with the structure of the exam before you walk into the room. How many sections will there be? How many questions in each section? Are the questions in each section mandatory or do you get to only choose some of them? [they are all mandatory in EC102] How many marks is each question in each section worth? I cannot stress this enough. I personally have screwed up exams on this basis - I had to do two long questions from a section, but I thought I had to do three and so wasted 40 minutes - and I do not want to see you doing the same.

That last question (how many marks is each question worth?) is vital. You need to plan your time in the exam. The exam is 3 hours (180 minutes) long. Allow for 15-20 minutes at the end as a safety buffer in case you run-over in some questions or to review your answers. That leaves 160-165 minutes. If a question is worth 5% of the exam, you should therefore aim to give it around 8 minutes.

For many subjects at LSE, you get a choice of questions in the exam, which means that it’s possible to study “strategically” by picking your topics. You cannot do that for EC102. Professor Young is adamant that an ‘First’ should mean that you know at least something about every topic.

Normally past exams are an excellent guide, but this is only the second year that Professor Young has taught EC102 and the exam format is changing this year. The micro questions from last year are probably still useful preparation, but you should only look at the macro questions if they seem familiar to you. Your real focus should be on the sample exam questions, the problem sets and the weekly quizzes.

Again, I encourage all of you to attend Iain’s 10 (!) revision lectures.

Good luck!

I have finished marking your final problem sets and have put your answer sheets on the table in S600. Here are the summary statistics:

Number of students:	71 (quite low!)
Mean	61.9
Median	63.0
Std. Dev.	9.1

Just as a reminder, since we’re coming up towards exams, LSE is able to accommodate special requirements during your exams, including extra time, being seated in smaller rooms with fewer people, permission to take food into the exam, etc.

Further information is available through the Disability and Wellbeing Office: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/disabilityOffice/informationForStudents/Default.htm

Please note: You need to let the school know of any requirements at least seven (7) weeks before your first exam.

Have a great break.

Here are some summary statistics for the first problem set of Lent Term:

I didn’t manage to get to Q10 today in all of my classes, so I have done up a brief note describing it. You can get it on my webpage here: http://barrdear.com/john/ec102-2007-2008

Also, a reminder: Your next problem set is due NEXT WEEK in class.

I wasn’t able to get through question 10 in all of the classes today, so I have done up a brief note on how it is done. You can see it here: ec102-2007-2008-lt-quiz-3-notes-on-q10.doc.

18 Jan 2008, 12:35 - Email sent:

I wasn’t able to cover the discussion question from the macro quiz 1 in all of our classes this week. To remind you, the statement we were to consider was:

“The GDP of major oil producing countries is overstated.”

If I didn’t cover it in your class, or if we did and you’re still confused, I have written up a brief explanation here: http://barrdear.com/john/2008/01/18/australia-youre-not-as-rich-as-you-think-you-are/

I use mining iron ore in Australia instead of oil in Saudi Arabia, but the principal is the same.

Since we missed the 10^th class last term, we will be having catch-up classes next week in addition to our regular classes. The extra classes are:

Group 2 (normally 14-15): Tue 11-12 in L52
Group 3 (normally 12-13): Thu 18-19 in Z29
Group 4 (normally 15-16): Tue 09-10 in H104
Group 5 (normally 17-18): Tue 17-18 in D702
Group 6 (normally 09-10): Wed 09-10 in H202

Timetables assures me that none of you have clashes with these times. However, if you are in groups 2, 3, 4 or 6 and can’t make your extra class, you may come to the group 5 class in D702 on Tue between 17:00 and 18:00.

Please do not switch to any of the others, as all of the rooms are tiny except for D702. You simply won’t fit.

You can collect graded answers for problem set 2 from my pigeonhole in S600 (that’s straight out of the main lifts on the 6^th floor of St. Clements building).

You can see summary statistics and a graph of the result distribution on my website: http://barrdear.com/john/ec102-2007-2008/

Here are some summary statistics from Problem Set 2:

Just a reminder - we will not have class this week. We will have an extra class next term to catch up.

Problem Set 2 is still due this week. You can put your work in my pidgeon hole in S600 (that’s on the 6th floor of the St. Clement’s building).

Have a good holiday and I’ll see you all in the new year.

Here are some summary statistics from Problem Set 1:

So if you want to see me, you can come to S182 (that's on the 1st floor of St. Clements) between 10:30 and 11:30 on Tuesday or Thursday.

I'm doing this because so few of you come to see me each week and by holding the O.H. in my office, I can get work done when you're not here. If I get a lot of students turning up, we'll move it back up to S684.

Approximate assessment criteria for Problem Sets in the Economics Department. Economics is at the bottom. Note that these (a) are general, not specific to EC102; and (b) apply to the hand-in problem sets, not the weekly quizzes.