Subject: Returning Assignment #1 From: Mark Walker Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:39:48 -0700 To: Econ 479 I'm about to email your assignments back to you, along with my comments and a grade. The way I'm doing this is as follows: comments are contained in footnotes (actually, "endnotes"), which are gathered at the end of your paper. I've highlighted passages in the papers: red indicates that I have a comment about grammar, punctuation, word usage, spelling, writing style, etc.; blue indicates that my comment is about the content, the economics. The grades on this first assignment are relatively low. Recall that I said in class that this would surely happen. I expect everyone's writing to improve dramatically during the semester and your grades to correspondingly improve. It's extremely important to me that you do well in this course. The course was my idea from the beginning. While others have agreed with me that it's important, I'm the one who has a lot invested in the success of this course, and therefore in your success. All my comments are constructive; they're intended to help you become a better writer. Assignment #2 is to rewrite this first assignment, taking into account the comments on your paper, as well as the comments below. I'll send a separate email about Assignment #2. There were a number of difficulties that appeared not just in one or two papers, but in many or even most of them. I've tried to gather the ones I could remember here in this email that's going out to everyone. Here they are: (1) Very few of you addressed the question about estimating the opportunity cost of reading a book. It's actually not so simple. A straightforward way to approach it is, for any given person, to use the amount of money he or she could earn in the time required to read the book. It would be easy to use existing data to determine a range of people's wage rates, or an average wage rate, then multiply that by the average number of hours people would take to read the book, and presto, you have the average opportunity cost. A few of you did allude to this idea by referring to the foregone income one could earn, and that was good. The problem with this method of estimating the opportunity cost, however, is that most people can't say "OK, I won't read this book, instead I'll work an additional six hours this week and make $120." Most jobs don't provide that flexibility: you work a set number of hours each week. So while estimating the opportunity cost can be done, it's actually too complex for this assignment. (2) Almost everyone made some reference to the idea that if the book costs, say $20, then the opportunity cost includes this $20, because the reader could instead use the $20 to buy something else. This could be considered a kind of opportunity cost, but since it's diretly accounted for in the price of the book and in the price of alternative choices, we generally consider this a direct monetary cost and not an opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is generally used to refer to the value of foregone alternatives that aren't reflected in the good's price -- such as the opportunity to instead use the time to earn money, or go to a movie, or just lounge around the pool, or sleep -- and of course the opportunity cost is the value of the *best* (highest value) alternative. (3) A common grammatical error, which at least half of you made, is reflected in the following sentence: "When a person is considering whether to purchase a book, they take into account the opportunity cost of reading it." "They" should be "he" or "she" or "he or she." The pronoun has to match the "number" of the noun it refers to. In this case the pronoun refers to "a person," which is singular; "they" is plural. See this website for a good exposition of correct pronoun use: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/handouts/grammar/g_pronuse.html (4) Several of you said that Random House should reduce the prices it charges for its books. Others said the price should be raised. There is no information in the assignment that implies Random House's prices are "too high" or "too low." It's quite possible that Random House is currently charging the profit-maximizing price -- but unfortunately that price results in less profit than in the past because of (for example) reduced demand due to the increased opportunity cost of reading books. (5) There were far too many instances of missing words, obviously misspelled words, or use of the wrong word. In most cases, simply reading your memo over before submitting it would lead you to catch these obvious mistakes. The reader who sees this kind of thing (for example, your boss) thinks the writer is careless and lazy; it appears that the writer doesn't care whether he does a good job or not. Here are a few examples: "There several factors besides the obvious that potentially could have a negative or positive affect in the sales of books." Three errors in this sentence. "As the cost of books continues to grow student have begun to consider multiply factors before just buying a text book." Four errors in this sentence. "This concept is know as opportunity cost." "People must decide what to focus there attention on." (6) There were too many instances of overblown writing, sometimes referred to as bloviation. Your objective is not to impress the reader with your writing style; it's to inform the reader in as clear a way as possible. (Note: not "in as clear *of* a way as possible." The "of" is incorrect.) Here are some examples of bloviation: "As the world continues moving towards the future ... " "Due to modern parameters, today's busy lifestyles and hectic schedules ... " "In a naturally increasingly fast paced society that we currently live in ... " "Opportunity cost is defined as basically the cost of passing up the next best choice." That last sentence is excellent -- except for the word "basically." That's just fat, to which you should apply liposuction. In fact, after you write, you should read what you've written, looking assiduously for places to apply liposuction. Finally, I'm going to repeat some advice I've already given in class and on the course website: (7) Use a dictionary and thesaurus, and use them often. A good online dictionary/thesaurus is at http://dictionary.reference.com/ I have a link to this site right at the top of my browser, and I use it constantly. (8) Good writing requires rewriting. I placed some version of the following comment on many papers: "This gives the impression that it was written at a single sitting, and that you submitted it without editing or rewriting it, or even reading it over before submitting it." I repeat: your success is my success. And your success will be of enormous value to you for the rest of your life. So let's all work at becoming better writers. I'm available for consultation or in any other way that can help you. Just send me an email. ================================================================= Mark Walker Email: mwalker@arizona.edu Chairman, Economics Dept. Phone: 520-621-6155 University of Arizona Fax: 520-621-8450 Tucson, AZ 85721-0108 www.u.arizona.edu/~mwalker