By Chewxy, on April 30th, 2008%
Economics people like to think at the margin. Yoram Bauman even made a joke out of this – “I’m going to buy an orange, I’m going to buy another orange, I’m going to buy another orange – ”
So do I. Of course, I don’t buy one orange at a time; my margin unit for fruits is usually the mass of it (1/2 kg of oranges is at the margin already) . Ah, but that’s not what I’m going to talk about.
A few days ago, I got an email saying that a department in uni had wanted to get rid of some furniture, including some very comfy chairs. Most people on MSN know that I’ve been complaining about my chair, and my intention to go to OfficeWorks to get a new one. So when such an opportunity arose, why not just go grab a free chair?
So yesterday, a few friends and I went to grab some furniture. There were many (more than 20) identical chairs that were up for grabs. And so we each took 2. I took… 4.
The reasoning is simple – assuming that carrying the chairs back is like a production, carrying two chairs back isn’t marginal. You don’t really incur an extra cost carrying more chairs, but you do lose out on opportunity costs (i.e. more chairs in this case). But with 4 chairs, its at the bottom of of the U curve. Carrying one extra chair would incur an extra cost (in time and effort – the chairs are free anyways).
Here’s a marginal cost curve:
As you can rightly see, the cost of ‘producing’ chairs decreases as the number of chairs ‘produced’ per person approaches 4. ‘Produce’ any more than 4 chairs, and the cost will significantly increase. Okay, perhaps this graph isn’t useful in this case. The MR-MC graph would be more useful… but I’ll talk about that later.
Continue reading Thinking At The Margin
By Chewxy, on April 28th, 2008%
Today was a crazy crazy day. Let’s see what happened today:
Continue reading What A Day – I Rock
By Chewxy, on April 23rd, 2008%
What language do you dream in?
I usually dream in English. Occasionally I dream in other languages. For example, if I do happen to watch a Japanese drama before I sleep, I’ll dream in Japanese, and wake up the next morning only to gain the temporary ability to speak Japanese. It lasts for about 20 minutes only . . . → Read More: Dream Language
By Chewxy, on April 21st, 2008%
I had a nap. And I dreamt.
In my dream, I was in a strange place, like a cross between the UT3 maps DM-Shangri-La and DM-Rising Sun, without the weapons or powerups. An old man walked up to me and smacked me in the face. I was angry and quickly retaliated. I tried to shove the old man but nothing happened to him. It was like whatever physical attacks I did to him had no effect. So I shouted at him: “What the hell is wrong with you!”
He pushed me down, and I was sitting on a chair (that apparently popped out of nowhere) then he asked me in a very calm tone: “What’s wrong with you?”
I said: “Nothing”
Then he said: “Let me tell you what’s wrong with you. You think prices are being set by supply and demand”
Continue reading When the Rules Break Down
By Chewxy, on April 18th, 2008%
Hi all,
I’ll be liveblogging my mid-semester exam. It’s from 2pm to 5pm AEST. and during this time, I’ll occassionally pop back here to blog. I will not blog the questions, or the answers (because that would constitute cheating), but I will blog my thoughts – what I think about the exam. Or whatever stray thoughts that come in my head when I do my exams.
This is an open book exam. And I have access to the internet while the exam is going on. Yes I know I’m supposed to be focussing on the exam instead.. but hey, a guy can have a spare thought yea?
Rules for you readers:
- Do not ask about the exam.
- Do not ask about the questions or answers.
Right then? Here we go. Continue reading Liveblogging My Exam
By Chewxy, on April 14th, 2008%
Few days ago, cfgt sent me an email, about being Chinese. It was a list of 28 + 4 things on how to know if you’re Chinese, and here’s the list, + my comments Continue reading I’m Chinese Afterall
By Chewxy, on April 9th, 2008%
Software are not people. They’re stupider than people. Here’s a list of stupid software I’ve encountered (and got very frustrated with) in the past week:
- EViews 6
I know I’ve given Eviews 6 quite a thumbs up. But that was on a small scale of data (about 5000 observations – like all my econometrics assignment have). But when I tried to load millions of observations (4.45 million, specifically), it kept crashing. Over and over again. And it’s not due to the lack of RAM. It just crashes. I mean, it does data processing fine, but after a while of messing around with the data, it crashes. That’s it, folks, when you use the Quick Estimate Equation function, with 4.45 million observations, and leave it for a while, it bloody crashes!! Continue reading Stupid Software
