Organizations and Markets

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• 1. Chihmao Hsieh  |  6 May 2007 at 12:25 am

  I’ve never tried it myself, but I can imagine a good ‘nerd’ practical joke.

  Basically the set-up would be to find a good faculty or student lounge with a dry-erase board. Grab a grad econometrics text, flip to a random page, and write down 2-4 pages worth of equations on the board. Feel free to sprinkle in some random arrows and ‘QED’s here and there. It might help to draw some arrows in heavily. Also draw some graphs, it doesn’t matter whether the graphs pertain to the equations. In fact, the less the graphs make sense, the better. Have fun with it. Make stuff up. Fill up the board, except for a small portion of the board. Then circle all that stuff you drew, and then write ‘DO NOT ERASE.’

  Invite a passionate colleague for coffee in the lounge. Challenge one of their working papers. No matter what s/he says, tell him/her that you don’t understand, and that you need him/her to draw it up on the board. If all goes right, s/he’ll squeeze all the explanation into that small space that’s left. Guide him/her to write around the ‘important’ text (‘Hey there’s space over there!’). Ideally, s/he’ll be pissed that the original author was so inconsiderate.

  Then tell him/her that you have a different interpretation/explanation. Ideally, s/he’ll challenge you back. Proceed to erase all the stuff that says ‘DO NOT ERASE.’ When your colleague yells out and criticizes that you are neither scholar nor gentleman (i.e. ‘a bad bad man!’), calmly explain to him/her that you wrote all that and that you don’t need it anymore.

  Obviously, there are some fun nuances you could probably include. Nonchalantly remarking that the original author’s derivation is ‘brilliant’ or pointing out subtleties of the insights (i.e. those arrows or graphs) can help set up the prank.

  For the prank to work, paper and pencil cannot be easily accessible to your target. Clearly s/he mustn’t be familiar with your handwriting. And obviously, you have to be SMOOTH and do all this with a very straight face. On that last, I would probably need a lot of practice to be able to pull this off myself.

  DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any fallout!

• 2. Chihmao Hsieh  |  6 May 2007 at 1:17 am

  > …obtained some “Caution: May Cause Drowsiness” stickers
  > which I bring to seminars and discretely affix to hard copies of
  > papers…

  Incidentally, Peter, I’m guessing you meant to say ‘discreetly.’ But if playing a practical joke on us, harhar I get it…

• 3. Cliff Grammich  |  6 May 2007 at 9:01 am

  Somewhat off-topic, but I remember an ad for a local restaurant in a U of Chi student newspaper claiming “If you don’t eat at my restaurant I’ll shoot this waitress” (or something like that, showing man with toy gun and bound and gagged waitress at his feet) prompted a very long critique in the paper about the violence, sexism, etc. of the ad. The late Mike Royko heard of the controversy and quipped that Hyde Park was the type of place where if somebody got a pie in the face the geeks would start calculating different aspects of the trajectory while mention at a party of a foolish chess move would send gales of laughter into the night . . .

• 4. Peter Klein  |  6 May 2007 at 12:21 pm

  Chihmao, I wish I were that clever, but it was a goof (now corrected).

• 5. David Gordon  |  7 May 2007 at 9:51 am

  Ron Hamowy once told me that in an Western Civ course, he gave a lecture that was all about made-up people and events. The students took notes as usual and appeared unaware anything was wrong.

• 6. Peter Klein  |  7 May 2007 at 10:00 am

  David, that reminds me of the famous Doonesbury cartoon from 1985 (thanks to Mother Jones for this summary):

  In a classic Doonesbury cartoon, a rumpled professor holds forth from a lectern while his students dutifully scribble away in their notepads: ” . . . and in my view, Jefferson’s defense of these basic rights lacked conviction. Okay, any discussion of what I’ve covered so far?”

  “Of course not,” he thinks to himself. “You’re too busy getting it all down.”

  “Let me just add,” he goes on, “that personally I believe the Bill of Rights to be a silly, inconsequential recapitulation of truths already found in the Constitution. Any comment?”

  The students continue to take notes.

  “No, scratch that!” he says, raising his voice and waving his hands. “The Constitution itself should never have been ratified! It’s a dangerous document! All power should rest with the executive! What do you think of that?”

  They keep writing, their faces blank.

  “JEFFERSON WAS THE ANTICHRIST!” the professor screams. “DEMOCRACY IS FASCISM! BLACK IS WHITE! NIGHT IS DAY!”

  The students are still taking notes as the professor collapses on the podium, announcing, “Teaching is dead.”

  “Boy, this course is really getting interesting,” one student says.

  “You said it,” another responds. “I didn’t know half this stuff.”

• 7. Matt Huber  |  8 May 2007 at 10:01 am

  I borrowed this one from Thomas Sowell. When I introduce supply and demand, I draw a demand curve and tell the class it’s a demand curve for panty hose and since this product is purchased almost exclusively by women, demand is inherently unstable.

  This one really works if your campus has a more feminist bent than mine does and if the class is actually smart enough to get the joke.

  Another good one is to give an exam on December 7th that is written in Japanese. When someone says something about it, you respond “Sneak Attack!!”

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