Lies…

March 15, 2015

…damn lies and statistics. You have probably hear the quote above – it’s from Samuel Langhorn Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain. He was never one to pass up the opportunity for a good quote and I never pass up the opportunity to mis-quote, so...

A Venn diagram of exam probabilities

March 5, 2015

Both mock exams and the real thing are swiftly approaching. Time for exam strategy and the fine-honing of your economics skills. The basis of this is invariably to go through past exam papers and do the probability calculations. Yes, I know, you are probably fed up...

New Year Predictions from Australia

January 21, 2015

There is nothing quite like Christmas holiday in Sydney, Australia. My fiancée is an Aussie so we get to spend a few weeks of the winter escaping the cold/wet/grey of Shanghai for summertime with Santa. What invariably strikes me every time I go to Oz is something...

Bubbles

November 30, 2014

It is actually quite refreshing to be cornered by a 16 year old with a sharp mind and sharper question! I have no qualms whatsoever in saying “I really don’t know!” to any of my students. I do have issues with teachers who do not get back with an...

Read the IA instructions!

November 9, 2014

The May 2014 Subject Reports are out and for IA in economics it basically deja vu all over again. Let me summarise: in the nicest possible manner, the report is basically telling students and teachers to read the instructions. That’s what I’ve been doing...

Tick-boxing to win a wager

November 1, 2014

Having just read the latest IB Subject Reports for economics whilst simultaneously receiving the next round of IA drafts from the IB2s, I took the opportunity to illustrate how easy it is, in fact, to get a reasonable grade on an economics IA script. It really...