My mom has a wonderful book called Rules of Thumb. It contains 129 pages of random facts, such as the following: "As a rule of thumb, one ostrich egg will serve 24 people for brunch," and "A submarine will move through the water most efficiently if it is 10 to 13 times as long as it is wide."
My favorite rule of thumb appears on the cover of the book (clearly the author thought it important enough to showcase).
"Up to 25 percent of the guests at a university dinner party can come from the economics department without spoiling the conversation."
Something to keep in mind during Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. One of my friends from school might be in a bit of trouble with this one since he, his dad, and at least two of his brothers are economists. My dinner party should be fine though. The one other econ major in my family decided to stay in Utah for Thanksgiving this year, and my parents can always banish me to the kids' table if I start monopolizing the conversation. Cheers!!
Who's the other econ major from the family?
ReplyDeleteOk, ok, I lied a little bit. Even though Sevak was an International Relations major, I think he almost took enough econ courses to be a major, and he knows more about economic world events than me. . . . so I consider him an honorary econ major.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I was thinking. And btw, technically he was an "International Studies" major with a trade and finance emphasis.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I totally remember that book. Man, that's been around a long time!
ReplyDeleteDo I count as an "Econ minor" since I took at least three Econ courses back in the 1970s? (and I successfully answered Econ questions on the CSET..thanks to Megan's tutoring?) haha
ReplyDeleteP.S. What if I watch Fox news a lot and agree with the economic thought of Sean Hannity, Bill Kristol, Charles Krauthammer, et al? Does that count? ;)
Thanks Megan, I am flattered to receive an honorary economics major. FYI: I was actually registered two semester out of my 3.5 years at BYU (Spring/summer 05) as a double with econ major. However, after one of my dates with Chrissie where I drew a supply and demand curve on a napkin, I figured I wouldn't get far in trying to bring in principles such as sunk cost into practice at home :).
ReplyDeleteOh and that's not true that I know more than you on economics world events. I think you trump all of my knowledge in practical principles by just a few posts in this blog.
ReplyDeleteBut I did think to mention during thanksgiving dinner that my eating of extra food had a very steep diminishing marginal utility; and then realized that none there would care what I just said.