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The problem about international economics is that (i) you need to draw a quarter-cycle or a "production possibility frontier" (which I never saw in my life), (ii) draw a "social utility curve" tangent to the quarter-cycle (I never saw this curve either) (iii) then draw another set of quarter-cycles and flip them over to the upper righthand corner of the diagram, and (iv) draw one straight line which is simultaneously tangent to both production quarter-cycles (under the simplest two-country model).

I felt it was a medieval science when I first learned it.

I will become a patissier, God willing.

by tuasfait on Tue Jun 13th, 2006 at 12:24:14 PM EST
You mean like this?

You can spice it up with a little catastrophe theory...


guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper
by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Tue Jun 13th, 2006 at 02:28:09 PM EST
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I will become a patissier, God willing.
by tuasfait on Tue Jun 13th, 2006 at 10:04:14 PM EST
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Hey, the epicycles were a precursor of Fourier analysis... And they kept increasing the number of terms of the Fourier series on the basis of empirical data...

Cut medieval astronomers some slack: not everyone can be a Hipparcus, a Ptolemy, a Brahe, a Kepler, a Herschel.

guaranteed to evoke a violent reaction from police is to challenge their right to "define the situation." --- David Graeber citing Marc Cooper

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Wed Jun 14th, 2006 at 07:08:03 AM EST
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There's a lot to be said for this analysis of the history of Science.

Cut medieval astronomers some slack: not everyone can be a Hipparcus, a Ptolemy, a Brahe, a Kepler, a Herschel.

The way I always put it is that not everyone can build the cathedral, Some people have to build the scaffolding to help in the construction.

Science is a process of building explanations for how the world works. We often learn as much if not more from science that turns out to be wrong (not that the people who worked with epicycles were actually wrong, but that's a whole other barrel of fish)


Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.

by ceebs (ceebs (at) eurotrib (dot) com) on Fri Jun 16th, 2006 at 03:46:41 PM EST
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