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Sorry you felt that way. The tools necessary to solve the homework were presented in class during Tuesday's class (Nov. 22). Also, I am available to meet during office hours or by appointment, and I very much encourage that you stop by if you have questions about any of the assignments in the course. I would be more than happy to answer any questions or uncertanties you might have.
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On average, after planting 2500 acres, you would expect that only 2200 would yield a crop. There is a 12% production loss.
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I'm glad you thought it was a fair evaluation. Thanks for the feedback!
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I'm really glad you're finding it useful! That was the intent :-)
Thanks for the feedback!! -
Absolutely. If it is a specific question (not just "how do you do this problem"), then I absolutely encourage it!
I always ask before each class whether you have questions (jokes, stories, etc.). That would be a great time to ask -- typically, questions that you might have are similar to those that others have. There are positive externalities from asking them. -
Thanks for the feedback! It sounds like you have three concerns:
1) Whether you are required to do the assignment.
2) My qualifications for teaching the concept
3) Whether the topic is crowding out material intended to be taught in the class
I will respond accordingly.
1) As with any assignment, you are never required to complete it. All of the assignments are opportunities that allow you to weigh your opportunity cost of not completing the assignment and the benefits you will receive by completing it.
2) My qualifications: I graduated as summa cum laude (top academic honors) from a top business school in which I was in the honors program. The latter focused on providing students with rigorous theoretical and hands-on knowledge about the ability to be successful in the business world. Moreover, I have had multiple jobs in the private and public sectors. To prepare for the lessons and assignments, I have talked to colleagues and used numerous sources from the current literature to gather the most up-to-date knowledge about preparing students to be successful after their college careers.
3) One of the primary intents of this class is to offer students information and practice that will improve their critical thinking skills. The intent of assignments associated with being successful after college is no different. Furthermore, no material that was originally intended to be covered in the course will be lost, primarily because most assignments related to the topic are given as opportunities to be completed outside of class. If you wish to acquire additional economics knowledge, I will enthusiastically encourage you to pursue reading other economics textbooks and academic articles, as well as talking to me outside of the classroom. I will be more than glad to chat economics with you!! Lastly, if you would like me to provide more practice on your take-home opportunities (i.e., more problems), I will do so on request.
And as always, if you have suggestions about the type of material you would like for me to cover in order for you to "better use the time to learn economics," I would be very appreciative to hear your feedback. -
On numerous occasions and when explaining the assignment during Tuesday's class, I mentioned that your objective statement must be concise, outline your strengths, showcase how you plan to help the employer achieve their missions/requirements, and use the keywords you highlighted to reflect that you actually read and appropriately interpreted the job advertisement.
In general, if you have questions about any of the assignments, I encourage that you email me, ask me a question on this board, or stop by during office hours and ask me. I am always more than happy to help, and I would much rather chat with you before you hand in the assignment so that you avoid losing points. -
We went over the basic format in last Tuesday's class. The assignment lists numerous requirements that I am looking for. If you follow those, then the specific format does not matter.
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Great! I'm glad that you were able to get some useful information out of the experience. We'll continue with preparing you for seeking jobs throughout the semester.
P.S. This type of feedback is very useful! Thank you! -
The basic supply and demand diagrams can be used to analyze dynamic events, but this type of analysis is limited. For example, if you don't immediately make the conclusion that a market shock will instantaneously result in a new equilibrium, you can use the S&D diagrams to examine how both producers and consumers respond.
A shift in a curve will cause a change in prices, and both consumers and producers will gradually respond over time to these.
I would recommend looking into the cobweb model of economics, which shows the response dynamics over time. It is relatively simple and intuitive, but does provide some indication of how time-dependencies play a role in market behaviors. -
You're absolutely right! That is an alternative that southern U.S. ranchers are thinking about and using. Here's a link to an article in the Billings Gazette discussing a bit of this situation: http://goo.gl/F6MF5
There are several important aspects that may make the transfer of cattle north less appealing than sending feed south. First, transportation costs might be higher for sending cattle. For example, cattle are heavier, there may be additional costs associated with transporting the cattle, and the typical weight loss occurring in cattle during shipment may be exacerbated because the animals are already stressed.
Second, as the article mentions, the physiology of the cattle may be different. Southern cows are not conditioned for the Montana winters and give birth 2-3 months earlier than Montana cows. The potential losses and/or excessive veterinary costs associated with these outcomes may be too substantial for southern ranchers to continue to ship many of their cattle northward.
However, i things continue to worsen, we may see some very strange things continue to happen. -
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Thanks for the recommendation. Unfortunately, increasing the quiz time by 10 minutes would make the quiz be almost the same time as the exam. If I were to do this, then I would need to place a much higher weight on quizzes (for the final grade) than I do now.
Currently, quizzes are worth 15% of your total grade. Given that the intent of quizzes is to challenge you, I feel that this is an appropriate weight. Putting a greater weight would make it unfair to the students, because of the challenging material (and time constraints). If you miss a problem because you didn't study a topic or ran out of time, I don't want it to hurt your grade substantially.
On the other hand, placing a lower weight, would substantially reduce your incentives to study for the quizzes. The intent of quizzes is to prepare you for the exam. Therefore, I want to keep the incentives in place for students to study.
When I grade, I place less emphasis on the math/algebra than I do on the intuition. Intuition and conceptual understanding comes from learning topics that we go over in lectures and applying this knowledge to new scenarios. Therefore, if you make a math error, I usually take off only 1 or 2 points and carefully go through the rest of the problem so that I don't take off additional points that may be due to the initial math error. An extra 10 minutes may help you review your math, but that would only add one or two extra points. However, if you don't have a strong conceptual knowledge of a topic, then an extra 10 minutes would be of little benefit.
Obviously, you don't have the luxury of observing the overall trends of how students performed on the quiz. However, I can tell you that the majority of students did well on the algebraic part of the quiz and lost most of the points on the intuitive aspects. Therefore, I feel that additional quiz time would likely do little to benefit the grades of the majority of students.
Please feel free to ask me questions or voice additional concerns. I would like to provide you with as much opportunity as possible to fully grasp the topics in our class and show me (through quizzes and exams) that you have a strong understanding of these topics. However, I am less convinced this time (relative to the first quiz) that extra time would be value adding. -
My apologies. However, there is no concensus regarding the singular tense of the term "cattle." Using the term "calf" can be misconstrued as well, because calf refers to an animal that is between birth and weaning. However, feeder cattle consist of both feeder calves (those between birth and weaning -- about 1 year) and feeder yearlings (those between 1 and 2 years).
The closest general singular term I was able to find is "cow." However, this may also be unsatisfactory, because cow is often used to refer to only females. The Oxford English Dictionary lists "cow" as a synonym for "cattle," so the work may very well be the correct singular term.
Another alternative is to use the term "steer." However, the generality of using this term may be questionable because cattle in feedlots are not necessarily limited to steers.
Thanks for the suggestion! I'll be more careful about the ag.-specific terminology. -
Thanks. The first quiz is always tough because each group of students will be able to complete the quiz at different paces. From my side, I will consider extending the time frame provided for future quizzes, because the purpose of quizzes is you to be able to understand what material you may need to review and focus on, and for me to understand if there is a particular topic that many students in the class are struggling with. If the time constraint is of particular problem, then this information may not be revealed.
However, from the students' side, you should have a better understanding of what a "quiz" entails, and try to develop a better strategy for preparing for future quizzes. In this sense, the first quiz provided information for both the students and myself. -
Thanks for the feedback! I'll definitely consider it.
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Yes. It's handed back in class or you can pick it up from me when I'm in my office. There are also solutions for the homework posted on the class website under the "Homework" category.
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Consumer demand is often a function of perceptions. That is, if I believe something to be true, then I will act accordingly. Because there has not been any study that has examined the link between cancer and red meats, there was uncertainty regarding the effects of red meat consumption. Risk averse consumers may have, therefore, consumed less red meat because they were uncertain about its negative health impacts.
Yes, some people may think that colorectal cancer is directly related to eating carrots, running, smoking, etc. However, the study that has shown a weak or nonexistent link between red meat and colorectal cancer can have substantial effects on removing the uncertainty regarding colorectal cancer and meat consumption. If prior to the study, a consumer thought that eating carrots, running, or eating red meat could potentially cause colorectal cancer, that consumer may have avoided each of the three activities. Now that the consumer is aware that eating red meat does not cause cancer, the consumer may now start eating red meat (or eat more of it), but still avoid carrots and running (since there haven't been studies disproving the links between those activities and cancer).
Obviously, if a study came out showing that there *is* a direct link between red meat and cancer, then this new knowledge would most likely change consumers' perceptions toward red meat. It is likely that this study would cause a decrease in the demand for meat.
Great question! -
Sweet! Bekkerman - 1, Nutella - 0!
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Economics of Agricultural Marketing
Montana State University
www.montana.edu/bekkerman/agec321/agec321f11.html
Economics of...’s Bio
Anonymous questions/feedback for AGEC 321: Economics of Agricultural Marketing
