Issue 15, Spring 1998

William A. McEachern, Editor

Odds and Ends

In the 1993 AEA membership survey, "Teaching of Economics" was listed as a field for the first time, and 204 members identified this as one of their two specialty areas. In the 1997 report, this total increased to 296, for a growth rate of 45.1%. Notable additions since the 1993 survey include Kenneth Elzinga of the University of Virginia, and William Poole of Brown University. Perhaps the most visible economist self-identified as having a specialty in teaching is University of Chicago Professor Robert Fogel, the current president of the American Economics Association. Not bad company.

Edward R. Tufte, who teaches courses in statistics and information design at Yale, has written, designed and published three books that will aid any instructor concerned with how best to visually present information. The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (1983) both explains and demonstrates certain rules for presenting numerical data in a graphically engaging manner. This book has become a classic of its genre. Tufte offers examples of design excellence, such as a map conveying the diminished size of Napoleon's Army during the Russian campaign. Such exhibits, says Tufte, show "how multivariate complexity can be subtly integrated into graphical architecture, integrated so gently and unobtrusively that viewers are hardly aware that they are looking into a world of four or five dimensions " (p. 40). The second book in his trilogy, Envisioning Information (1990), presents what he calls pictures of nouns, pictures of representational reality rather than numbers. His third book, Visual Explanations (1997), focuses on displays that illustrate dynamic processes. I attended a one-day workshop he presented last summer in Boston. He was terrific.

In the Fall 1997 Teaching Economist, I reviewed Virtual Economics: An Interactive Center for Economic Education, a CD-ROM produced by EconomicsAmerica: the National Council on Economic Education. Michelle Mason Winston of the University of Nebraska, who was the Project Manager, has e-mailed me "your review of Virtual Economics is the best I've read so far (not 'best' in terms of being complimentary, of course)." She wants to make clear that the mission of the CD is to provide teachers "at all precollege grade levels easy access to information on economic concepts and related topics and provide assistance in teaching these concepts." For the latest developments of EconomicsAmerica visit their Web site at http://www.economicsamerica.org/econedlink. That site provides Internet links and resources (CyberTeach) along with case studies (EconomicsMinute). Although the material is aimed at precollege students, you may find some of it useful in principles courses.

In the Economics Department at UConn last spring , 49% of grades at the introductory level were A's or B's. University wide, 62% of all grades at the introductory level were A's or B's. In some department, A's alone accounted for well over half the grades in introductory courses. For example, 62% of the grades in introductory Music were A's as were two-thirds of the grades in Sports and Leisure Studies and three-quarters of those in Allied Health. Too bad economics can't attract such bright students.

"Ignorance is not innocence but sin..." - Robert Browning

"Life is not an exact science, it is an art." - Samuel Butler

"There is no expedient to which man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking." - Sir Joshua Reynolds

Top                                                                                                                                                                                          Next