Stephen Kinsella, Ph.D

Here are Mathematica notes, slides, and code for a course I taught at NUI, Galway in 2006. I recall it didn’t go down that well, but the notes are pretty cool implementations of standard Solow/Ramsey type models, so I think, on reflection, I’ll put them out there.

You’ll need Mathematica or the free mathematica player to view the .nb files, but look at the .pdfs if you’re interested.

You’ll need to evaluate the mathematica file to generate the figures and solutions. Right click the link below to get the files in a .zip file.

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Some thoughts on using Wolfram’s typesetting software, Publicon.

Publicon is a pimped version of Mathematica’s front end, a graphical interface for the processing wizard that is the Mathematica kernel. I’ve tried it now for a while, and my thoughts on it are pretty negative, which I didn’t want. I was looking for a way to write some of my papers without having to enter the cumbersome latex markups which generate the mathematical notation you see in some of my papers. I didn’t find it here. Publicon has a lot of cool features, like different stylesheets for different article styles, and ‘pallettes’ of different notations and structural elements, which is why I downloaded the thing in the first place.

The problem is the export features: Publicon just doesn’t play well with professional-grade , so, for me, it’s not a runner.

Sad.

Some issues with the software:

1. Too expensive

2. Bibliography integration sucks

3. Latex export sucks.

4. Basic features of typesetting missing.

So, Publicon is still no way near persuading me to go from 40 dollar textmate+free latex solution.

The search continues.

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It’s official: sucking dead-dinosaur juice out of the ground and burning it is officially uncool.

link

Tags: Oil, Credit, Post+Oil+World, Cool+Phrases

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Read the rest of this entry »

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Professor Edward Nell of the New School for Social Research is coming in the spring as a Fulbright professor. I’m chuffed, and I think he will make a positive contribution to the research and teaching objectives of the department.

More details on Prof. Nell’s work and his books are here, and his New York Review columns are here. His books in print are here.

Incidentally, UL has 5 of the 29 awards in this category. Nice!

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I’ve developed a very simple application which allows students to text message the lecturer in class, and have their texts appear on screen for the class to see. The research led to a publication in the British Journal of Educational Technology, the text of which is here.

You can see the application at work at the screencast, or look at some slides of a presentation I gave on the work.

- Screencast -

My Text Message Doo-Hickey from Stephen Kinsella on Vimeo.

Or, you can download the software and mess about with it yourself.

- Download -

Download the software here (publish.zip

- Directions -

The application is an .exe file, works with Sony Ericsson W200i phones, and is easily extendible to other platforms and phone architectures, as the whole thing is written in Java.

Direction for use are equally simple:

Plug your phone into the computer using the USB cable. Start the application, select your phone’s port, and work away.

You’ll need to customise the phone for your needs (get yourself a cheap SIM card in your country’s cheapest GSM carrier, rewrite a bit of code for your phone, etc) but it’s not brain surgery.

-License -

The application is open source and licensed on a Creative Commons 2.0 license, that is, free use with no warranty, but with appropriate attribution.

If you extend the software, please feed back to me on how you did it, I’ll be interested to see where this goes.

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Wired editor Chris Anderson has recently claimed there’s so much data available on every topic we don’t need theory anymore—just looking at the data is enough. One reaction:

Like finding your wife rubbing butter onto a naked clown shaving your dog, there’s just so much wrong with that it’s hard to know where to begin.

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Tags: General, Scientific Method, Awesome Phrases

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Inflation eats money. Notes that were introduced only a few months ago are now totally obsolete. Figures quoted in trillions of dollars are commonplace.

This is Zimbabwe » Blog Archive » A currency in crisis

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Here’s the slide in AMBAC trading that led to a stop in the market yesterday. Ouch, what a jump!

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Tags: EC4024

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Here’s the presentation I gave at UL’s annual Technology in Teaching and Learning conference on this piece of software.

An explanatory paper is here.

Slides (made with 280slides.com as an experiment)

| View | Upload your own

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I’ll not be blogging for the month of June, as I’m taking care of my 3 day old second son, Cillian, who’s here on my lap as I write this.

May I suggest you have a look at these fine blogs?

The Bayesian Heresy (my favourite link-blogger at the moment)

Three Toed Sloth

Fafblog

UCD Geary Institute’s Blog Easily the most interesting research going on in Ireland at the moment, a must read.

New Economist

Cheers for reading, and see you in 30 days.

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Gas Prices Taking Effect: 11 Billion Fewer Miles Driven This March

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I’m interested in Randomness and Uncertainty, as you can see from here and here.

Here’s a lecture on Leonard Mlodinov’s new book:

“The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives” (Leonard Mlodinow)

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Could have been written about me.

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link

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Another semester draws to a close. Here’s what I learned from my little experiments in teaching this semester:

1. [EC6012] Asking students to give other students feedback on presentations isn’t smart: everyone will give everyone else a B+.

2. [EC4004] Text messaging in large classes works, but could be more effective if integrated properly into the lecture.

3. [EC6012] Modeling and numerical problem solving are preferable to problem-based methods in such a technical subject, with such defined end goals.

4. [EC4414] Students respond well to zero PowerPoint, though they take time to adjust to having technical pieces to read instead.

5. [EC4333] It’s always better to think in terms of concrete examples when teaching heterogenous classes, graphical models like the AS-AD and IS-LM need to be motivated carefully.

6. [EC4024] Students need more time with harder, abstruse material, like the Black-Scholes and APT models.

-For Next Year-

1. Improve and enhance the text message doo-hickey.

2. Rewrite the course outline for EC4333 to be based around successive historical episodes and case studies rather than putting the history part first and the analysis afterwards.

3. Strip out some of the macro modeling in EC4024 to make way for more time spend solving numerical BS/APT/etc examples. Spend more time in tutorials on this as well.

4. Consider not using PowerPoint for EC4333 this year entirely.

5. Include experimental and behavioural experiments in the tutorials in EC4004.

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Following on from our ESRI Seminar, here’s some coverage on the issue in the Guardian.

Also, our work was covered in the Evening Herald. Click below to download a scan of the article.

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I’m speaking at the ESRI on Thursday about these two papers (here and here) and really looking forward to it.

Here are the logistics.

I’ll post the slides to the presentation (and maybe a podcast of the seminar) when I’m done.

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