| Author |
Message |
Bill Bonde ('by a commodi
Guest
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| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 1:26 am
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
|
|
Mike Lyle wrote:
| Quote: |
Bill Bonde ('by a commodius vicus of recirculation') wrote:
Xah Lee wrote:
[...]
Nevertheless my four-letter words have left
indelible scars. (visible in the Talk area to this day)
I suspect that they could make those "scars" ephemeral, touch up a
bit
as it were, if they had wanted to. It is only because they seem to
believe in free and open debate about what should and should not be
included in Wikipedia that they retain even the roughest of dafts.
[...]
I suppose that apt "dafts" was a typo, but I hope it wasn't.
Almost every time when I put stuff like that into usenet posts, no one |
seems to notice. It's rather a shame since if you don't even try to be
clever when insulting people, why bother?
--
Had Tolstoy confined himself to war or peace, he could have been
finished in seven hundred and fifty pages.
--
In a day and age when some people would think nothing of throwing stones
at Rosa Parks, she dared to rock the bus. Bully for her!
(!!)
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R H Draney
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 2:09 am
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
|
|
Evan Kirshenbaum filted:
| Quote: |
Isn't that the way it was taught in the rest of the country? Columbus
discovers America, pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock, French and Indian
War, taxation without representation, revolution, constitution (no
mention of the interim US), Lewis and Clark, westward expansion,
industrial revolution, civil war, immigrant experience/melting pot,
World War I, depression. New Deal, World War II. If you ever got that
far.
|
That was the sequence I remember, and they started it over from the beginning
every year...there was often something about labor unions right around the World
War I stuff, and if you got as far as the end of your list you could go on to
"the struggle against Communism", civil rights, and (more or less
simultaneously) Vietnam and putting a man on the moon....
(We need a Very Young Person to tell us if they now teach Watergate and
disco)....r |
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Xah Lee
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 4:12 am
Post subject: Re: the engine of wikipedia |
|
|
ok, now the essay is on my site:
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/t2/wikipedia_engine.html
The FAQs actually number in thousands! see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAQ
(this may serve as a instance against those wikipedia nay-sayers in
this thread, where, if the article on FAQ doesn't exist, it'd be nearly
impossible or could take weeks for a professional social researcher to
dig out info of equivalent value, and depending the on number of days
spent, i'll bet the result won't match that of on wikipedia. Bah humbug
you pundit fools!)
Xah
xah@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/
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James Gifford
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 4:42 am
Post subject: Re: the engine of wikipedia |
|
|
"Xah Lee" <xah@xahlee.org> wrote:
| Quote: | (this may serve as a instance against those wikipedia nay-sayers in
this thread, where, if the article on FAQ doesn't exist, it'd be nearly
impossible or could take weeks for a professional social researcher to
dig out info of equivalent value, and depending the on number of days
spent, i'll bet the result won't match that of on wikipedia. Bah humbug
you pundit fools!)
|
Unintelligible is garbled and this. Paste Wikipedia from and cut?
--
|=- James Gifford = FIX SPAMTRAP TO REPLY -=|
|=- So... your philosophy fits in a sig, does it? -=| |
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Aatu Koskensilta
Guest
|
| Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2005 8:08 am
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
|
|
Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
| Quote: | Could you give me an example of an entry that you think is (or has
historically been) particularly egregious? Most of the ones I've
looked at appear to be reasonably decent, except during brief flurries
when somebody with an obvious axe to grind tries to hijack an entry.
|
I can't speak for Ivor, but the article on Gödel's incompleteness
theorems [1] was previously [2] not only wrong but simply an entirely
incoherent mixture of technical terms and terms that appear technical
but are not in fact used in mathematical logic. The section on Gentzen's
proof was particularly strange. It was obvious that whoever wrote that
section had no idea what Gentzen's proof establishes or how.
I've rewritten the three first sections (and corrected several attempts
to "correct" my corrections) but the rest are still mostly full of
nonsense, including such gems as Gödel's theorems only applying to
"systems that are used as their own proof systems" whatever that means.
Of course, for some reason Gödel's theorems are a wildly popular topic
in the net and perhaps this is somewhat atypical an article.
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gödel%27s_incompleteness_theorems
[2]
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gödel%27s_incompleteness_theorem&oldid=15621845
--
Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta@xortec.fi)
"Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, daruber muss man schweigen"
- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus |
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Laura F. Spira
Guest
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 3:28 pm
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
|
|
Tony Cooper wrote:
| Quote: | On Thu, 03 Nov 2005 06:50:44 +0000, "Laura F. Spira"
laura@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
Tony Cooper wrote:
On Wed, 02 Nov 2005 17:13:31 -0800, Evan Kirshenbaum
kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com> wrote:
Ivor Longhorn <longhornster@gmail.com> writes:
I view this as similar to my Econ 1 class at Stanford. The professor,
John Gurley, a Marxist (and cited as a "radical economist" in the
textbook we used), taught us the standard theory in, as far as I could
tell, a completely unbiased manner, even though I'm sure that in his
personal opinion (and own research) he considered much of what he
taught us to be incorrect or at least incomplete.
I seem to remember a thread a few months ago where I suggested that
teachers teach courses according to the syllabus even though some of
the teachers feel or know the material is incorrect in some aspect.
Some of those here in the teaching area took me to task on this saying
that any teacher guilty of this should find other work.
I happen to agree with Gurley. Teach the 101 level courses as
neutrally as possible. Offer to teach an advanced course that
presents his other views.
I don't remember the thread Tony refers to but I would have considerable
difficulty in teaching material that I knew to be incorrect. Theory
evolves and an important part of teaching should be to provide students
with the tools to undertake a critical appraisal of what is currently
"standard" so that they may participate in the future development of
theory. The fact that Evan was aware of the disjuncture between
"standard" theory and Gurley's work suggests that Gurley did not
entirely conceal his different perspective.
Incorrect in the accounting sense is completely different. The type
of incorrectness in the previous discussion is a theory that the
teacher does not believe to be correctly developed or a historical
event that the teacher does not believe to have happened the way the
text presents it.
|
Tony, accounting as it is taught at undergraduate level and beyond is
not a matter of numbers. Our students have to grapple with theoretical
constructs drawn from economics and other social sciences. My own area
of study is dominated by agency theory which I believe to be simplistic
and a poor explanation of corporate phenomena. I teach the elements of
agency theory to my students but I ensure that we discuss its history
and the alternative explanatory theories that have been developed, in
such a way that students are aware of the contradictions and grey areas.
As for historical events, I am old enough to remember some of the
corporate collapses that have shaped the development of accounting
standards. Where textbooks rely on limited contemporary reports, I think
it is very important for me to assist students in understanding the
context and environment in which the events took place.
| Quote: |
An example in the historical category would be the discovery of
America. The (pre-college) text books usually provide a couple of
pages on Isabella's funding and Chris's voyage. The texts may mention
that some think America was discovered by others before the Niña, the
Pinta, and the Santa Maria approached our shores, but the standard
version is taught.
What about the teacher, though, that has given the events a great deal
of study and feels strongly that the standard version is not the
correct version? He/She is faced with the "correct/incorrect" choice.
Standard version with mention of other possibilities, or version that
debunks standard version and covers other possibilities in-depth?
You might say that the teacher that feels something to be incorrect is
one thing, but its different when the teacher knows it is incorrect.
I submit that the teacher above "knows" his version is the correct
version as much as anyone knows an event that he didn't witness.
|
I don't understand the difficulty here. At secondary school level the
syllabus may be more prescriptive - I have no recent experience of that
- but university level teaching in my view absolutely requires that
students should be exposed to differing points of view and interpretations.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email) |
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Laura F. Spira
Guest
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 3:39 pm
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
|
|
Evan Kirshenbaum wrote:
| Quote: | "Laura F. Spira" <laura@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> writes:
I don't remember the thread Tony refers to but I would have
considerable difficulty in teaching material that I knew to be
incorrect. Theory evolves and an important part of teaching should be
to provide students with the tools to undertake a critical appraisal
of what is currently "standard" so that they may participate in the
future development of theory. The fact that Evan was aware of the
disjuncture between "standard" theory and Gurley's work suggests that
Gurley did not entirely conceal his different perspective.
I think he may have mentioned it in the beginning of the class, but it
was well-known. The fact that the textbook (the standard one) quoted
him and described him as a "radical" gave some clue as well. (Doesn't
everybody look up their professor in the index just to find out if
they're there?) But had I not seen those external signs, I don't
think I would have inferred it from his teaching.
He apparently felt, and I completely agree, that even if you don't buy
the current theory, it's important that you actually *know* it, not
merely know a caricature of it or a sketch where much time is spent
pointing out the holes.
|
Indeed, but how and when the alternatives are presented is crucial and
not easy to determine. In my experience, when mainstream theory is
presented to first year students without any suggestion that there might
be another perspective, those students who study the topic at more
advanced levels where they then encounter the critique often protest
that they should have been exposed to the critique much earlier. And
those who don't progress beyond first year level may go away thinking
there is no alternative.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email) |
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Tony Cooper
Guest
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 9:02 pm
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
|
|
On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 08:28:46 +0000, "Laura F. Spira"
<laura@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
(Cooper)
| Quote: | I seem to remember a thread a few months ago where I suggested that
teachers teach courses according to the syllabus even though some of
the teachers feel or know the material is incorrect in some aspect.
Some of those here in the teaching area took me to task on this saying
that any teacher guilty of this should find other work.
I happen to agree with Gurley. Teach the 101 level courses as
neutrally as possible. Offer to teach an advanced course that
presents his other views.
(Spira)
I don't remember the thread Tony refers to but I would have considerable
difficulty in teaching material that I knew to be incorrect. Theory
evolves and an important part of teaching should be to provide students
with the tools to undertake a critical appraisal of what is currently
"standard" so that they may participate in the future development of
theory. The fact that Evan was aware of the disjuncture between
"standard" theory and Gurley's work suggests that Gurley did not
entirely conceal his different perspective.
(Cooper)
Incorrect in the accounting sense is completely different. The type
of incorrectness in the previous discussion is a theory that the
teacher does not believe to be correctly developed or a historical
event that the teacher does not believe to have happened the way the
text presents it.
|
(Spira)
| Quote: | Tony, accounting as it is taught at undergraduate level and beyond is
not a matter of numbers. Our students have to grapple with theoretical
constructs drawn from economics and other social sciences. My own area
of study is dominated by agency theory which I believe to be simplistic
and a poor explanation of corporate phenomena. I teach the elements of
agency theory to my students but I ensure that we discuss its history
and the alternative explanatory theories that have been developed, in
such a way that students are aware of the contradictions and grey areas.
|
First, my contributions to the discussion have been about teaching at
the pre-college/university level. Your above points are far beyond
that level of teaching. In the original run of this thread, I brought
up that in the college/university setting the basic teaching can be,
and should be, expanded.
That said, I am struggling to think of any situation in the field of
accounting - at any level - where the teacher of accounting would be
faced with the decision of presenting the basic, generally accepted
facts or some other version that the teacher believes to be true.
Granted, I have not taken advanced accounting courses and may not be
familiar with the periodic need for debunking past "truths" in the
field. I am excluding the "what's best" theories. I think that it's
entirely different when a teacher of accounting says that the text may
say that this form of depreciation is best, but he/she feels that this
other form of depreciation is best. That's not a correction of a
"truth". Accepted principles are not "truths".
Perhaps, though, you can provide an example.
(Spira)
| Quote: | As for historical events, I am old enough to remember some of the
corporate collapses that have shaped the development of accounting
standards. Where textbooks rely on limited contemporary reports, I think
it is very important for me to assist students in understanding the
context and environment in which the events took place.
|
I don't see this as being the same as contradicting what has been
accepted as fact. When the textbooks say that MegaCorp failed because
(fill in the blank), and the teacher expands the reason for the
failure to include (fill in the blank), that's just not the same as
presenting a contradictory view of an accepted historical event.
(Cooper)
| Quote: | An example in the historical category would be the discovery of
America. The (pre-college) text books usually provide a couple of
pages on Isabella's funding and Chris's voyage. The texts may mention
that some think America was discovered by others before the Niña, the
Pinta, and the Santa Maria approached our shores, but the standard
version is taught.
What about the teacher, though, that has given the events a great deal
of study and feels strongly that the standard version is not the
correct version? He/She is faced with the "correct/incorrect" choice.
Standard version with mention of other possibilities, or version that
debunks standard version and covers other possibilities in-depth?
You might say that the teacher that feels something to be incorrect is
one thing, but its different when the teacher knows it is incorrect.
I submit that the teacher above "knows" his version is the correct
version as much as anyone knows an event that he didn't witness.
(Spira) |
| Quote: | I don't understand the difficulty here.
|
The difficulty is that the pre-college/university teacher of history
who believes strongly that some Viking first discovered America, and
teaches that Columbus was a Christopher-Come-Lately, is going to be
faced with angry parents demanding his dismissal. The angriest will
the parents of Italian heritage, and they may come with lawyers from
the Italian/American Anti-Defamation League (or whatever it's called).
The principal doesn't want the teacher debunking Columbus, and the
School Board doesn't want it either. So, yes, there is a great deal
of difficulty involved. Because of those difficulties, some teachers
do not present what they think to be correct.
(Spira)
| Quote: | At secondary school level the syllabus may be more prescriptive - I have no recent experience of that
- but university level teaching in my view absolutely requires that
students should be exposed to differing points of view and interpretations.
|
That's not at issue. The thread - or at least my part of it - has
been about teachers at the pre-college/university level.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL |
|
| Back to top |
|
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Laura F. Spira
Guest
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 11:00 pm
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
|
|
Tony Cooper wrote:
| Quote: | On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 08:28:46 +0000, "Laura F. Spira"
laura@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
(Cooper)
I seem to remember a thread a few months ago where I suggested that
teachers teach courses according to the syllabus even though some of
the teachers feel or know the material is incorrect in some aspect.
Some of those here in the teaching area took me to task on this saying
that any teacher guilty of this should find other work.
I happen to agree with Gurley. Teach the 101 level courses as
neutrally as possible. Offer to teach an advanced course that
presents his other views.
(Spira)
I don't remember the thread Tony refers to but I would have considerable
difficulty in teaching material that I knew to be incorrect. Theory
evolves and an important part of teaching should be to provide students
with the tools to undertake a critical appraisal of what is currently
"standard" so that they may participate in the future development of
theory. The fact that Evan was aware of the disjuncture between
"standard" theory and Gurley's work suggests that Gurley did not
entirely conceal his different perspective.
(Cooper)
Incorrect in the accounting sense is completely different. The type
of incorrectness in the previous discussion is a theory that the
teacher does not believe to be correctly developed or a historical
event that the teacher does not believe to have happened the way the
text presents it.
(Spira)
Tony, accounting as it is taught at undergraduate level and beyond is
not a matter of numbers. Our students have to grapple with theoretical
constructs drawn from economics and other social sciences. My own area
of study is dominated by agency theory which I believe to be simplistic
and a poor explanation of corporate phenomena. I teach the elements of
agency theory to my students but I ensure that we discuss its history
and the alternative explanatory theories that have been developed, in
such a way that students are aware of the contradictions and grey areas.
First, my contributions to the discussion have been about teaching at
the pre-college/university level. Your above points are far beyond
that level of teaching. In the original run of this thread, I brought
up that in the college/university setting the basic teaching can be,
and should be, expanded.
|
Evan was referring to university level study: it was his reference to
Gurley that I picked up on.
| Quote: |
That said, I am struggling to think of any situation in the field of
accounting - at any level - where the teacher of accounting would be
faced with the decision of presenting the basic, generally accepted
facts or some other version that the teacher believes to be true.
Granted, I have not taken advanced accounting courses and may not be
familiar with the periodic need for debunking past "truths" in the
field. I am excluding the "what's best" theories. I think that it's
entirely different when a teacher of accounting says that the text may
say that this form of depreciation is best, but he/she feels that this
other form of depreciation is best. That's not a correction of a
"truth". Accepted principles are not "truths".
Perhaps, though, you can provide an example.
|
I already have, in the paragraph you quoted above. Accounting courses
include a lot more than technical material: accounting has social
implications and our students study the economic consequences of
accounting "rules".
| Quote: |
(Spira)
As for historical events, I am old enough to remember some of the
corporate collapses that have shaped the development of accounting
standards. Where textbooks rely on limited contemporary reports, I think
it is very important for me to assist students in understanding the
context and environment in which the events took place.
I don't see this as being the same as contradicting what has been
accepted as fact. When the textbooks say that MegaCorp failed because
(fill in the blank), and the teacher expands the reason for the
failure to include (fill in the blank), that's just not the same as
presenting a contradictory view of an accepted historical event.
(Cooper)
An example in the historical category would be the discovery of
America. The (pre-college) text books usually provide a couple of
pages on Isabella's funding and Chris's voyage. The texts may mention
that some think America was discovered by others before the Niña, the
Pinta, and the Santa Maria approached our shores, but the standard
version is taught.
What about the teacher, though, that has given the events a great deal
of study and feels strongly that the standard version is not the
correct version? He/She is faced with the "correct/incorrect" choice.
Standard version with mention of other possibilities, or version that
debunks standard version and covers other possibilities in-depth?
You might say that the teacher that feels something to be incorrect is
one thing, but its different when the teacher knows it is incorrect.
I submit that the teacher above "knows" his version is the correct
version as much as anyone knows an event that he didn't witness.
(Spira)
I don't understand the difficulty here.
The difficulty is that the pre-college/university teacher of history
who believes strongly that some Viking first discovered America, and
teaches that Columbus was a Christopher-Come-Lately, is going to be
faced with angry parents demanding his dismissal. The angriest will
the parents of Italian heritage, and they may come with lawyers from
the Italian/American Anti-Defamation League (or whatever it's called).
The principal doesn't want the teacher debunking Columbus, and the
School Board doesn't want it either. So, yes, there is a great deal
of difficulty involved. Because of those difficulties, some teachers
do not present what they think to be correct.
(Spira)
At secondary school level the syllabus may be more prescriptive - I have no recent experience of that
- but university level teaching in my view absolutely requires that
students should be exposed to differing points of view and interpretations.
That's not at issue. The thread - or at least my part of it - has
been about teachers at the pre-college/university level.
|
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email) |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Tony Cooper
Guest
|
| Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2005 11:44 pm
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
|
|
On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 16:00:53 +0000, "Laura F. Spira"
<laura@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
| Quote: | Tony, accounting as it is taught at undergraduate level and beyond is
not a matter of numbers. Our students have to grapple with theoretical
constructs drawn from economics and other social sciences. My own area
of study is dominated by agency theory which I believe to be simplistic
and a poor explanation of corporate phenomena. I teach the elements of
agency theory to my students but I ensure that we discuss its history
and the alternative explanatory theories that have been developed, in
such a way that students are aware of the contradictions and grey areas.
First, my contributions to the discussion have been about teaching at
the pre-college/university level. Your above points are far beyond
that level of teaching. In the original run of this thread, I brought
up that in the college/university setting the basic teaching can be,
and should be, expanded.
Evan was referring to university level study: it was his reference to
Gurley that I picked up on.
That said, I am struggling to think of any situation in the field of
accounting - at any level - where the teacher of accounting would be
faced with the decision of presenting the basic, generally accepted
facts or some other version that the teacher believes to be true.
Granted, I have not taken advanced accounting courses and may not be
familiar with the periodic need for debunking past "truths" in the
field. I am excluding the "what's best" theories. I think that it's
entirely different when a teacher of accounting says that the text may
say that this form of depreciation is best, but he/she feels that this
other form of depreciation is best. That's not a correction of a
"truth". Accepted principles are not "truths".
Perhaps, though, you can provide an example.
I already have, in the paragraph you quoted above.
|
I was hoping for a more concrete example of something that was at one
time accepted as a fact, where subsequent examination has shown that
the one-time fact was incorrect, and where there was a period of time
when the new fact was not accepted by everyone. It is in that period
of time that the teacher who teaches the new fact may chose to allude
to the possibility of the new discovery being the right fact, but not
teach that the new fact is the right fact even though the teacher
believes it to be the right fact.
All the above at the pre-college/university level.
| Quote: | Accounting courses
include a lot more than technical material: accounting has social
implications and our students study the economic consequences of
accounting "rules".
|
This is such a difficult comparison. I'm referring to courses taught
at the pre-college/university level where the teacher is expected to
teach certain things and (and this is the gist of my argument) may
teach "facts" that he/she doesn't think are the correct facts or at
least not an accounting of all the facts.
I don't see how the teacher of accounting at the university level is
ever faced with this type of decision. That's why I'm hoping for a
more concrete example.
--
Tony Cooper
Orlando, FL |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Laura F. Spira
Guest
|
| Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 1:08 am
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
|
|
Tony Cooper wrote:
| Quote: | On Sat, 05 Nov 2005 16:00:53 +0000, "Laura F. Spira"
laura@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote:
Tony, accounting as it is taught at undergraduate level and beyond is
not a matter of numbers. Our students have to grapple with theoretical
constructs drawn from economics and other social sciences. My own area
of study is dominated by agency theory which I believe to be simplistic
and a poor explanation of corporate phenomena. I teach the elements of
agency theory to my students but I ensure that we discuss its history
and the alternative explanatory theories that have been developed, in
such a way that students are aware of the contradictions and grey areas.
First, my contributions to the discussion have been about teaching at
the pre-college/university level. Your above points are far beyond
that level of teaching. In the original run of this thread, I brought
up that in the college/university setting the basic teaching can be,
and should be, expanded.
Evan was referring to university level study: it was his reference to
Gurley that I picked up on.
That said, I am struggling to think of any situation in the field of
accounting - at any level - where the teacher of accounting would be
faced with the decision of presenting the basic, generally accepted
facts or some other version that the teacher believes to be true.
Granted, I have not taken advanced accounting courses and may not be
familiar with the periodic need for debunking past "truths" in the
field. I am excluding the "what's best" theories. I think that it's
entirely different when a teacher of accounting says that the text may
say that this form of depreciation is best, but he/she feels that this
other form of depreciation is best. That's not a correction of a
"truth". Accepted principles are not "truths".
Perhaps, though, you can provide an example.
I already have, in the paragraph you quoted above.
I was hoping for a more concrete example of something that was at one
time accepted as a fact, where subsequent examination has shown that
the one-time fact was incorrect, and where there was a period of time
when the new fact was not accepted by everyone. It is in that period
of time that the teacher who teaches the new fact may chose to allude
to the possibility of the new discovery being the right fact, but not
teach that the new fact is the right fact even though the teacher
believes it to be the right fact.
All the above at the pre-college/university level.
Accounting courses
include a lot more than technical material: accounting has social
implications and our students study the economic consequences of
accounting "rules".
This is such a difficult comparison. I'm referring to courses taught
at the pre-college/university level where the teacher is expected to
teach certain things and (and this is the gist of my argument) may
teach "facts" that he/she doesn't think are the correct facts or at
least not an accounting of all the facts.
I don't see how the teacher of accounting at the university level is
ever faced with this type of decision. That's why I'm hoping for a
more concrete example.
|
Accounting as it is taught in UK universities is not about facts. We
have to deal with a range of different theories and different practical
approaches which are continuously evolving in the context of a changing
business environment. At a technical level, the change to International
Financial Reporting Standards has meant rewriting all our teaching
material. At a theoretical level, we discuss the political and social
drivers towards convergence of reporting models which has led to the
changes. There are many academics who question the value of convergence
but we still teach the technical stuff. I teach the current rules but I
also teach the rules of the past and offer an authoritative critique
alongside them where I think it's relevant.
Double entry hasn't changed but that's not accounting. The whole nature
of financial reporting in the UK has changed over the last two decades.
And the way it's done in the US is different from the way it's done in
the UK and Europe. And a good final year student should be able to
describe the differences and evaluate them critically.
I agree with Evan that you need to understand the established theory of
the moment before you can pull it apart but if the theory is undergoing
substantive and authoritative challenge at the time you are teaching it
I think students are being short-changed if they are not hearing about
that challenge.
It would be interesting to hear from someone teaching science.
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email) |
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Chess One
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 7:24 pm
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
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"Laura F. Spira" <laura@DRAGONspira.fsbusiness.co.uk> wrote in message
news:dkisfd$u90$1@newsg4.svr.pol.co.uk...
| Quote: | Tony Cooper wrote:
Double entry hasn't changed but that's not accounting. The whole nature of
financial reporting in the UK has changed over the last two decades. And
the way it's done in the US is different from the way it's done in the UK
and Europe. And a good final year student should be able to describe the
differences and evaluate them critically.
I agree with Evan that you need to understand the established theory of
the moment before you can pull it apart but if the theory is undergoing
substantive and authoritative challenge at the time you are teaching it I
think students are being short-changed if they are not hearing about that
challenge.
It would be interesting to hear from someone teaching science.
|
Back in 1974, when I was studying acounting and economics as seperate
disciplines, [we were also privileged to play with the first computers, and
associated ticker-tape and punch cards]. In those days studies in economics
were of a generic market-capitalism type and diffident even to suffering
mixed-economy models to intrude on 'theory' of economics, which was
intepreted entirely as market-theory.
About 15 years ago in the US I asked someone who had just undergone an MBA
course "what non-taxation accounting" he had studied? - and he laughed. It
was all tax accounting, and no other; no models, no theorums and no
economics either.
Perhaps the moral of these stories is unclear, but the practical application
is that if you want to set up internationally, hire an American for
tax-dodges especially if you are investing in a banana republic, but hire a
European to understand actual market forces in the economy. Don't hire any
Marxists at all, since they are still in denial of what a market is.
Your conversations here on the niceties of various models are very much of
the theoretical kind, and are housed and clothed only in University
curricula.
Phil Innes
| Quote: |
--
Laura
(emulate St. George for email) |
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Xah Lee
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 9:10 pm
Post subject: Re: the engine of wikipedia |
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it has came to my thought that many of you here may actually have
little idea of the extent and scope of wikipedia.
allow me to introduce:
http://xahlee.org/Periodic_dosage_dir/t2/wiki_vrici.html
browse the list of topics. Some will be of interest to you, few you may
have expertise. Read a couple of articles on subjects you know well.
Read a couple that piques your curiosity. Read a couple completely
foreign.
Xah
xah@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/ |
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the Omrud
Guest
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| Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2005 10:05 pm
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
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Chess One <innes8@verizon.net> spake thusly:
| Quote: | Back in 1974, when I was studying acounting and economics as seperate
disciplines, [we were also privileged to play with the first computers, and
associated ticker-tape and punch cards]. In those days studies in economics
were of a generic market-capitalism type and diffident even to suffering
mixed-economy models to intrude on 'theory' of economics, which was
intepreted entirely as market-theory.
|
Those weren't the "first" computers. In 1974 there had been nearly
three decades of electronic computers.
--
David
=====
replace usenet with the |
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gekko
Guest
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| Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2005 1:20 am
Post subject: Re: the asterisk |
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Okay, so, like, there was this, um, you know, the Omrud
<usenet.omrud@gmail.com>, who was all, 'You go girl,' and then went:
| Quote: | Chess One <innes8@verizon.net> spake thusly:
Back in 1974, when I was studying acounting and economics as
seperate disciplines, [we were also privileged to play with the
first computers, and associated ticker-tape and punch cards]. In
those days studies in economics were of a generic
market-capitalism type and diffident even to suffering
mixed-economy models to intrude on 'theory' of economics, which
was intepreted entirely as market-theory.
Those weren't the "first" computers. In 1974 there had been
nearly three decades of electronic computers.
|
So, just to ask ... in 1974, the "first computers" had already
existed for 30 years, yes?
Might not a person, in 1974, have been able to play with one of
those? Or had they all been thrown away by then?
--
gekko
The present day composer refuses to die. -- Edgar Varese |
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