Fake Llama
Did You Know?
I prefer to sit on the right-hand side of the bus.
Unsolved Mysteries
Today I noticed a small cut on the top of the knuckle of my left index finger. It appears as though it has been there for perhaps a day or so, still looking "fresh" but beginning to heal a little. I had never seen or felt it before. It's origin remains unknown.
Free Company
In Britain in the 1960s, so says my Macroeconomics lecturer, a smart man came to two conclusions about a publically listed company. The first was the the share price was severely undervalued. The second was that the risk-adverse company had a wealth of uninvested funds sitting idle in its bank account earning ordinary interest. The man proceeded to buy the company at its overly-low share price - hence buying it for far less than it was worth - and then paid for this company-acquisition by using the funds from his newly acquired company bank account. In essence, he purchased a company (now worth the difference between the actual previous value before his purchase and the price that he paid from the company's own funds, and thus worth something in the form of assets used to run the business) which was making healthy profits, for free.
Observational Study
It's odd how something you wouldn't normally give a rat's testicle about becomes intriguing to people because of a hoopla which is created around it. In Stats 108, data was collected from a random sample of students in the lecture theatre pertaining to each person's guess of the lecturer's age. The sample was then used to establish a sample mean and spread, and consequently used as an example of how this sample data can be used as an estimate of the corresponding population mean and spread (ie. how close the sample would be to the actual average age guess of everyone in the class). Well anyway, having conducted this age-guessing exercise, almost everyone (myself very much excluded) found themselves whinging at the fact that the lecturer wouldn't offer up as an irrelevant side-note his actual age. It kept coming up over the course of the two days that we covered the topic, and it kept ending in a collective groan of disappointment from 400 or so stats students.
Back up a second. These people went from presumably not caring to suddenly "needing" to know the man's age? An hour earlier, had I gone around and asked everyone if they cared how old he was, I doubt anyone would have said yes. Actually, they'd probably tell me to quit asking stupid questions and/or throw shit at me, and fair enough too. What changed between then and now? "Hype" was created out of nothing: building up the underlying question - which itself was irrelevant to the class exercise - to a point at which it became (unreasonably) intriguing. I found this interesting in that it mirrors what happens often in real life - artificial hype being generated around something out of thin air, and the so-called "masses" mindlessly becoming interested in this "thing" just because of this hype. Think Pop Idol shows and Paris Hilton :p Do these interested people not stop to think about the fact that they're interest lies in a knock-on effect which has simply lead from widespread "hype" to a feeling that one should be interested, as opposed to having a grounded logical reason for being so?
Google
Break over for me. Back to essay-writing.
The llama on the right is a sculpture.
I prefer to sit on the right-hand side of the bus.
Unsolved Mysteries
Today I noticed a small cut on the top of the knuckle of my left index finger. It appears as though it has been there for perhaps a day or so, still looking "fresh" but beginning to heal a little. I had never seen or felt it before. It's origin remains unknown.
Free Company
In Britain in the 1960s, so says my Macroeconomics lecturer, a smart man came to two conclusions about a publically listed company. The first was the the share price was severely undervalued. The second was that the risk-adverse company had a wealth of uninvested funds sitting idle in its bank account earning ordinary interest. The man proceeded to buy the company at its overly-low share price - hence buying it for far less than it was worth - and then paid for this company-acquisition by using the funds from his newly acquired company bank account. In essence, he purchased a company (now worth the difference between the actual previous value before his purchase and the price that he paid from the company's own funds, and thus worth something in the form of assets used to run the business) which was making healthy profits, for free.
Observational Study
It's odd how something you wouldn't normally give a rat's testicle about becomes intriguing to people because of a hoopla which is created around it. In Stats 108, data was collected from a random sample of students in the lecture theatre pertaining to each person's guess of the lecturer's age. The sample was then used to establish a sample mean and spread, and consequently used as an example of how this sample data can be used as an estimate of the corresponding population mean and spread (ie. how close the sample would be to the actual average age guess of everyone in the class). Well anyway, having conducted this age-guessing exercise, almost everyone (myself very much excluded) found themselves whinging at the fact that the lecturer wouldn't offer up as an irrelevant side-note his actual age. It kept coming up over the course of the two days that we covered the topic, and it kept ending in a collective groan of disappointment from 400 or so stats students.
Back up a second. These people went from presumably not caring to suddenly "needing" to know the man's age? An hour earlier, had I gone around and asked everyone if they cared how old he was, I doubt anyone would have said yes. Actually, they'd probably tell me to quit asking stupid questions and/or throw shit at me, and fair enough too. What changed between then and now? "Hype" was created out of nothing: building up the underlying question - which itself was irrelevant to the class exercise - to a point at which it became (unreasonably) intriguing. I found this interesting in that it mirrors what happens often in real life - artificial hype being generated around something out of thin air, and the so-called "masses" mindlessly becoming interested in this "thing" just because of this hype. Think Pop Idol shows and Paris Hilton :p Do these interested people not stop to think about the fact that they're interest lies in a knock-on effect which has simply lead from widespread "hype" to a feeling that one should be interested, as opposed to having a grounded logical reason for being so?
Break over for me. Back to essay-writing.
The llama on the right is a sculpture.
posted by Steve @ 4:06 PM
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