Miscalculations and Misjudgements: My EngG130 Midterm Story

[Moonbear]

Actually here's a great example:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jMNoef6xDenBbHWO0Im6rIjDmAgAD9BOJH300

The Obama administration asked places that received stimulus funds for raises to count the percent raise as a portion of a job saved. Here's one person's take



Did they really have nobody who realized that 1.84 percent is .0184?

Besides that obvious part, how is any raise counted as saving a job? Giving a raise presumes you already were able to pay the base salary before the raise, so the job was secure anyway. Seems there's more than one math-challenged person involved in this whole process.

Does that mean I lost my job because I didn't get a raise this year? (The university decided not to pay out any annual cost-of-living increases this year because of tight budgets...granted, cost of living really hasn't changed, so it's not like anyone is going to be cash-strapped for not getting a raise, but I think the state legislature enacted legislation last year mandating those annual 3-4% raises, so we have yet to see how that's going to work out...I figure there are plenty of faculty in the law school and business school who will be eager to take on that battle while the rest of us just sit and wait for some weird math to justify that the university is complying with state law.)

 

[BobG]

Besides that obvious part, how is any raise counted as saving a job? Giving a raise presumes you already were able to pay the base salary before the raise, so the job was secure anyway. Seems there's more than one math-challenged person involved in this whole process.

Does that mean I lost my job because I didn't get a raise this year? (The university decided not to pay out any annual cost-of-living increases this year because of tight budgets...granted, cost of living really hasn't changed, so it's not like anyone is going to be cash-strapped for not getting a raise, but I think the state legislature enacted legislation last year mandating those annual 3-4% raises, so we have yet to see how that's going to work out...I figure there are plenty of faculty in the law school and business school who will be eager to take on that battle while the rest of us just sit and wait for some weird math to justify that the university is complying with state law.)

I'm not so sure about their accounting system either. It does attempt to make up for one big discrepancy in the current way of counting jobs, but I don't think it winds up being much better. If a person loses an $80,000 a year job and winds up taking a different $50,000 a year job, does that mean there's no net losses in jobs? What about employees that accept a pay cut in order to prevent layoffs - is that still no net loss in jobs?

No, I'm not sure the accounting system they're using does a good job of reflecting the employment situation, but it isn't an outrageous concept.

 

[sportsstar469]

Besides that obvious part, how is any raise counted as saving a job? Giving a raise presumes you already were able to pay the base salary before the raise, so the job was secure anyway. Seems there's more than one math-challenged person involved in this whole process.

Does that mean I lost my job because I didn't get a raise this year? (The university decided not to pay out any annual cost-of-living increases this year because of tight budgets...granted, cost of living really hasn't changed, so it's not like anyone is going to be cash-strapped for not getting a raise, but I think the state legislature enacted legislation last year mandating those annual 3-4% raises, so we have yet to see how that's going to work out...I figure there are plenty of faculty in the law school and business school who will be eager to take on that battle while the rest of us just sit and wait for some weird math to justify that the university is complying with state law.)

yeah i was looking at that and thought it was weird how giving employees more money causes more jobs to be saved. i thought in a an economy like this reducing ones paycheck in order to hire someone else to work also (both for a reduced wage) would in turn increase jobs?

btw, that little exerpt about your bio class...my class does the same thing. one person does the homework and we all copy. in all honesty, the homeworks are useless, I am still getting 90s or higher on the practical, and what's funny is i have a way higher lecture average than the guy who does the hw.

 

[lawtonfogle]

I've been dealing with premeds too long (even was one once, until I saw the light and came to my senses) not to have anticipated that. It was always amazing how many students in my biology classes would sit right outside the door to the lab copying the homework assignment from the one person who did it. I get even. If I suspect that's happening, I put some questions on my exams that come straight from the homework assignments. If they actually did their own homework, they'd know the answer.

That does not always work. You see, for one class, I did the homework assignment when many others didn't do it (they didn't just copy, they just didn't turn it in). The teacher decided to get back at those people by putting it on the test the next week. I got the test, put down my answer, and got the question wrong. You see, my proof (it was a too page proof of something, I forget what exactly) had one small problem in it, but we didn't get the homework back till after the test. Granted I still got half credit because the proof was good except for one fatal mistake. I think it took me over two weeks to figure out what was wrong with that one mistake.

Now, I give assignments to my students to complete as a group in the lab. I know there are a few groups where some of the students come in with the answers already filled out so they can rush through the lab...oddly enough, they never seem to do well until they catch on that my assignment questions are all worded in a way that they need to actually tell me what they see in the lab, not what the book says about those structures. At the beginning of the term, I would end up crossing out half their answer and deducting points with the explanation that they couldn't have seen what they have described because A) the material in the lab was missing that part, or B) it's gross anatomy, not histology, and no microscopes were provided to see those microscopic structures they described. Now they just try to sweet talk the TAs into giving them the answers.

Oh, I remember how the bio students used to screech when they weren't allowed to use calculators on their exams. But, we always made it so the final steps of arithmetic were very simple if you set up the problem right...100 divided by 10, or square root of 16 type stuff. If they couldn't solve that without a calculator, they didn't belong in college.

You would be surprised... well not actually, but many people would be surprised at how bad some college students are at math.

 

[lawtonfogle]

yeah i was looking at that and thought it was weird how giving employees more money causes more jobs to be saved. i thought in a an economy like this reducing ones paycheck in order to hire someone else to work also (both for a reduced wage) would in turn increase jobs?

btw, that little exerpt about your bio class...my class does the same thing. one person does the homework and we all copy. in all honesty, the homeworks are useless, I am still getting 90s or higher on the practical, and what's funny is i have a way higher lecture average than the guy who does the hw.

Maybe it would be better to count the total salary change. Cut one person wage in half and hire another person? No net change. Someone takes a cut, negative change. Ect.

 

[General_Sax]

I ended up getting 22/40, the class average was 19.5/40. I did better than I was expecting