Homework for Lab #5 (Wednesday, 6月9日）

Class will meet at the usual time; I have an exercise for you to do with the other students. But I will also send an e-mail about arranging alternate hours so I can extend our 1-on-1 talk to greater than 10 minutes per student.

For those who remain interested in Taleb, here is the most important essay he wrote during the financial crisis in 2008. And here is his Twitter feed.

Your next task is to create a philosophical 'map for thinking'... it doesn't need to be the same as Beane, Gladwell, Taleb, or Lady Gaga. My suggestion for an outline is to actually start with the same exercise I did, which was to draw a map/chart. Then I would suggest making a standard paragraph outline divided by sections or categories of the chart. Or by problematic areas of the chart that require further explanation. For each section, try to come up with at least two demonstrative examples that easily fit, and one that doesn't fit or can't be explained. Why? Multiple examples will create a redundancy so your essay draft is less fragile... in other words it will give you more choices in case your first example doesn't really work out. And why a non-fitting example? Because examples that don't fit will help you draw those boundaries between domains more precisely, or help you re-think your system. (Of course we have become somewhat skeptical of maps in general, but a good map actually indicates its own limitations.) I would also recommend that you try to think of a "they say" for the start of your essay... in other words it would be much easier to begin by contrasting your 'map' with some other one that you find to be inadequate or misleading.

Homework for Class #9 (Wednesday, 6月2日）

Read: Black Swan 100-133 (chapters 8-9), bottom of 185 - bottom of 189 ("The Grueness of Emerald," "That Great Anticipation Machine"), top of 196 - top of 200 ("The Melting Ice Cube," "Once Again Incomplete Information," "What They Call Knowledge"), top of 223 - top of 228 ("The Long Tail," "Naive Globalization," "Reversals Away from Extremistan"), 284 ("Two Ways to Approach Randomness"), 286-298 (chapters 18-19)

That looks like a lot, but it's actually the same length as the previous two assignments. And as I said today, I think the further you read along, the more you will understand.

Read: They Say / I Say 121-128 ("Academic Writing Doesn't Always Mean Setting Aside Your Own Voice")

46 (Jenny - repeat). Define narrative fallacy (according to Taleb) and offer two new examples - anything that isn't discussed in Black Swan is OK.

48 (Cathy). The move of "mix[ing] academic and colloquial styles" that Graff & Birkenstein advocate is very difficult to do, and it is also somewhat peculiar to American English. Do you think this "mixing" is more difficult for you than it would be for an American student? (Or less difficult?) Would this type of mixing be desirable in a 中文 essay?

49 (Tiara). Explain what Taleb means by "silent evidence" and give a (new) example of a mistake/misinterpretation that comes from ignoring silent evidence.

50 (Elsa). Describe a person you know who is like "Fat Tony." Describe a person you know who is like "Dr. John."

51 (Alice). Ask a question about something confusing to you in Black Swan.

52 (Catherine). Ask a question about something confusing to you in Black Swan (different than #51).

Homework for Class #8 (Wednesday, 5月26日）

Reminder: Final draft of "Blink Response Response" essay due Monday night 5月24日 at 22:00, to Google Docs. Please make sure your English name is in the title somewhere.

Read: They Say / I Say 129-137 ("But Don't Get Me Wrong: The Art of Metacommentary")

Read: Black Swan Chapters 5-7 (50-99)

I will begin the class by trying to answer the helpful questions that Doll and Kim posted from last week.

43 (Peter). Find one "metacommentary" move in Moneyball and two in Black Swan. (And copy them for us here.)

44 (Ting). Find one "metacommentary" move in Blink, and two in Black Swan. (And copy them for us here.)

45 (Aaron). Define confirmation bias (according to Taleb) and offer two new examples - anything that isn't discussed in Black Swan is OK.

46 (Jenny). Define narrative fallacy (according to Taleb) and offer two new examples - anything that isn't discussed in Black Swan is OK.

47 (Esther). Do you feel that Taleb's unique writing style (irregular organization, use of fictionalized characters, use of autobiography, use of historical comparison, declarations of arrogance) makes Black Swan easier to understand, or more difficult? To put it another way, Taleb sometimes describes battles with his editor... if you were the editor, would you help him or fight back?

Homework for Class #7 (Wednesday, 5月19日）

Reminder: First draft of "Blink Response Response" essay due Monday night 5月17日 at 22:00, to Google Docs. Please make sure your English name is in the title somewhere. Final draft due Monday 5月24日, but I will not make detailed comments on the first draft, only about paragraph transitions. So you can revise or not revise as it suits you. I propose that this essay be changed to 800-1000 words and 17.5% of the final grade, and the next essay be 1200-1500 words and 32.5% of the final grade... you can email me individually if you think this is unfair for you.

Read: They Say / I Say 92-100 ("So What? Who Cares?)

Read: Black Swan Prologue, Part I Introduction, Chapters 1-4 (pages xvii-xxviii, 1-50)

35. (都學生!!!) Post a one sentence answer to "so what?" for your current essay. You may find the templates on They Say I Say 98-99 useful.

36 (Alice). Find one "so what?" move in Moneyball, one in Blink, and one in Black Swan. (And copy them for us here.) The easiest place to look is probably the introductions, but also possibly the conclusions.

37 (Cathy). Find one good/effective paragraph transition in Moneyball (according to the guidelines for transitional logic given in They Say I Say 105-118), one in Blink, and one in Black Swan. (And copy for us here.)

38 (Catherine). Find one good/effective paragraph transition in Moneyball (according to the guidelines for transitional logic given in They Say I Say 105-118), one in Blink, and one in Black Swan. (And copy for us here.)

39 (Elsa). Identify two more events that fit Taleb's criteria for black swan (rarity, extreme impact, retrospective but not prospective predictability). I suppose to translate from English to Chinese idiom, we should say white crow?

40 (Tiara). Explain what Taleb means by "Platonification" or "nerd-ification," and give two examples of this epistemological mistake.

41 (Kim). Ask a question about something confusing to you in Black Swan.

42 (Doll). Ask a question about something confusing to you in Black Swan (different than #42).

Homework for Lab #4 (Wednesday, 5月12日）

Read: They Say / I Say 105-18

Write: Paragraph outline of your response to the blink-write. The outline should have an overall thesis sentence, and a topic sentence for each paragraph. You should also choose at least one representative quotation taken from the blink-write for each paragraph, and use the "frame and chop" technique to write it into a new sentence.

Links to Video: Part I (Breakfast and Lunch), Part II (Lunch and Dinner)

More Weirdness: Check out this "photoshop" picture. The older man is Bill James and the younger man is Theo Epstein - two characters in Moneyball. The meaning of the picture is that Epstein has used the new quantitative analysis about defensive statistics (created by statisticians like James) to change the strategies of his Boston Red Sox team. Thus he loves "run prevention."

More quotation technique: I already shared the Google Document of the changes to Kim's sentences I made in class, but I also found a related blog post from a class I taught in California last year. Maybe it will be helpful too... click the comments below to read.

Homework for Lab #3 (Wednesday, 5月5日）

This is just a reminder to myself. We are going to have the "blink-writing" exercise, and then we will begin the process of having you respond to / edit a classmate's "blink-writing."

I also want to include a workshop focused on two skills that almost every student in the class needs to improve, based on my experience reading the first essay: how to insert quotations grammatically, and how to create transitional sentences between paragraphs.

Homework for Class #6 (Wednesday, 4月28日）

Read: Blink 176m-179b, 183t-186b, 189t-229b, 232m-244m, 266t-270t (t means top, m means middle, b means bottom). I must apologize, I've deleted the 'happy ending' from the book. It's about a 小提琴手 who can't find a job because her profession discriminates against women, but then the 交響樂隊 devise a new 'blind' selection method to thin-slice only for musical ability, and not for other applicant characteristics like gender, ethnicity, etc.

Read: They Say / I Say 78-90 (you might also watch this video, which makes a similar point)

29 (都學生!!!). Create a reply to my comments on the final draft of your essay #1, using one or more of the 'partial concession' templates on They Say - I Say 90頁. Write this in red text below my comments on the Google document. Yes, really.

30 (Esther). Search G&B's They Say - I Say book (1-90頁) for at least three instances in which they actually use the same 'internal naysayer' move that they discuss in chapter six. (You needn't search far; I count at least two in chapter six itself.) Do you find it annoying that they use their own recommended writing methods inside the textbook, or helpful?

31 (Jenny). Gladwell is, according to one of his reviewers, "an omniscient, many-armed Hindu god of anecdotes" (inside front cover). However, he has a tendency to cherry-pick his anecdotes to suit his central thesis, as well as a tendency to be overly impressed by certain kinds of professional expertise. Think of two examples of 'false expertise' that might lead us to question the model of expertly-trained thin-slicing that he describes on Blink 176m-179b & 183t-186b. How can we tell true expertise from false expertise? Are there certain kinds of questions/problems/domains that are more likely to produce false expertise than others?

32 (Ting). Is a writing teacher a false expert (see previous question, #31)? Where does a writing teacher's method of gathering knowledge map against the ones we've discussed in the class so far? (As in Moneyball, Blink, your previous question #20, etc.)

33 (Peter). Go to this website and watch the featured video. Compare to the Diallo case discussed in Blink. Do you feel this is a tragic failure of thin-slicing, or is there some other explanation? You may want to do a quick Google search to survey the controversy the video has created.

34 (Aaron). Pay close attention to the large paragraph at the bottom of Blink 267頁. For one thing, you may notice that Gladwell is using an 'internal naysayer' - not to make a concession, but in fact to make an amplification of his argument. For another, you may agree with the naysayer in this case! Summarize his point and explain why you agree or disagree with it.

Homework for Class #5 (Wednesday, 4月21日）

Read: Blink 52m-69t, 72t-86m, 96t-111m, 117t-119t, 124-142m, 143m-146t, 155b-174t (t means top, m means middle, b means bottom)
Read: They Say / I Say 68-75

22 (Cathy). Give an example of the "priming" effect (Blink 52m-59t), from your personal experience or acquaintance. Use either an "implied I" template from G&B 73, or an "embedded voice marker" template from G&B 75 to shift from Gladwell's general concept to your specific example.
23 (Alice). Give an example of "rational overshadowing" (Blink 124t-139t... i.e. "too much information" or "paralysis by analysis"), from your personal experience or acquaintance. Use either an "implied I" template from G&B 73, or an "embedded voice marker" template from G&B 75 to shift from Gladwell's general concept to your specific example.
24 (Doll). Take a few of the association tests at the Project Implicit website, and explain your results as examples (or counter-examples) of the "Warren Harding effect" (Blink 72t-86m). Use either an "implied I" template from G&B 73, or an "embedded voice marker" template from G&B 75 to shift from Gladwell's general concept to your specific example.
25 (Elsa). Using one of the "yes, but..." templates from last week, explain some potential problems with Gladwell's analysis of the Aeron chair (167m-174t). He is using this as a further example of the "transference bias" effect discussed on 155b-166b, but it seems different in some ways from cola and margarine.
26 (Tiara). Using the summary and quotation techniques we learned previously, read Gladwell's story about automobile sales (88b-96t) and explain it to your classmates, so they don't have to read it!
27 (Kim). Using the summary and quotation techniques we learned previously, read Gladwell's story about improvisational comedy (111m-117t) and explain it to your classmates, so they don't have to read it!
28 (Catherine). Using the summary and quotation techniques we learned previously, read Gladwell's story about 消防隊員 (122t-124t) and explain it to your classmates, so they don't have to read it!

Homework for Class #4 (Wednesday, 4月14日）

Reminder: Final draft of Quantitative vs. Qualitative essay due to Google Docs at 21:00 on Monday, 4月12日. Please title the document as follows so I know it's finished. And feel free to email any questions between now and then.

Essay 1f (Your Name): "Your Title Here"

A Recommendation: If you didn't read the chapter about using quotations in They Say / I Say last week, or you didn't read it carefully, I strongly suggest you read it this weekend. The templates on 46頁 are good, and the general explanation for how and why to use quotations is good too. (The one thing they don't tell you is how to change the grammar of the quoted sentences to fit better with the grammar of your sentences, but that's something I can help you with later this semester.) I think all of you could benefit by using a bit more quotation to establish your theys; as the chapter says, it makes it seem less like you're just having a dialogue with yourself.

A Clarification: I hope this was evident in the way that I've discussed the essay over the past two weeks, but this is my order of priority in judging your grade.

High Importance... organization of ideas, sequencing of sentences and paragraphs, logical coherence, orchestrating dialogue of arguments
Middle Importance... philosophical insight, research quality
Low Importance... style, correct usage of words and word forms, grammatical mechanics, etc.

Of course I cannot say that philosophical insight and research quality have no importance, because your paper must present a philosophical argument of a kind, and weigh various "they" arguments, the more specific the better. And I cannot say that style, mechanics, usage, and so forth have no importance, because I must be able to read your paper and understand what you say. But my major focus for this essay, and for the class in general, is helping you learn how to construct arguments at the sentence and paragraph level.

Read: They Say / I Say 55-67頁 (Read this as soon as you can... I think you will find the templates helpful for the final draft of your essay!)
Read: Blink 3-47頁

17 (Peter). Moneyball is clearly better than traditional baseball scouting for analyzing certain phenomena. But it leaves many areas of baseball un-analyzed, and some of these areas will therefore require traditional scouting methods to complement quantitative analysis methods (at least until better Q.A. methods are developed). Give a couple of examples of scouting techniques in Lewis' book that sound rather like Gladwell-style "thin-slicing." (But don't repeat the "Billy at his trading desk" example.)
18 (Jenny & Aaron answer separately). Describe one personal experience in which you used thin-slicing successfully, and another in which you used thin-slicing unsuccessfully.
19 (Cathy & Catherine answer separately). Describe a (non-baseball!) situation/phenomenon for which the thin-slicing technique in Blink would never/rarely work. Use one of the disagreeing templates on They Say / I Say 60頁, or one of the "yes, but..."templates" on 65頁.
20 (Ting). In our discussions of Moneyball, we used "quantitative" to describe the method of broad-sample empirical analysis, like Billy Beane uses for baseball, and "qualitative" to describe other methods of deriving knowledge. But in fact there are many different types of qualitative methods. We dismissed some of them as being purely stupid or self-protective, but some may actually be useful in certain situations, especially those where reliable quantitative methods are unavailable. I will list a few, and you need to take them one by one and explain whether or not they could be seen as thin-slicing. In other words, what we are trying to do is see if all cases of intuition (that are not nonsense) can be covered by the thin-slicing concept, or if there might also be other reliable types of intuition: a) intuition from long experience, b) intuition from expert/technical/specialized knowledge, c) intuition from "common sense" or popular consensus, d) intuition from tradition, e) intuition from perception of beauty or ordered pattern, f) intuition from religious/mystical/supernatural/transcendental experience.
21 (Esther). I want you to do a miniature version of the SPAFF analysis discussed in the first chapter of Blink. Here's what to do. First, you need two friends who are dating to be your volunteers. Second, you need either a video camera or a webcam with a recording feature. You need to record one of the two faces for 5 minutes, and the other of the two faces for 5 minutes. (It might have to be a different five minutes depending on your camera set-up.) Don't start the recording right away... give them a neutral topic to get them warmed up, like what food they love to eat or something like that. When you are ready to gather your "data," ask them one or both of the two key questions Gottman uses (what do 你們 tend to fight about? and how did 你們 meet?). A full explanation of the SPAFF codes is here, and a shorter list of codes here. But for your analysis, you only need to use three codes that we will call by colors: green for positive or neutral emotion, yellow for weakly or moderately negative emotion, and red for strongly negative emotion. Make a chart that divides the 10 data minutes (5+5) into 20 segments of 30 seconds each, and analyze by marking a color for each segment depending on the most negative emotion that you observe during this segment. (So even a single moment of yellow within a 30 second period that was mostly green would still count as yellow.) Bring a copy of the video to class if you can.

Homework for Lab #2 (Wednesday, 4月7日）

Reminder: Complete first draft of quantitative vs. qualitative essay. Due 21:00 Tuesday 4月7日, 1000-1200 words. I will read it in Google Docs, so all you need to do to alert me that you're finished is change the title from:

Essay 1 (Student): "Your Title Here"

to

Essay 1d (Student): "An Actual Title Here"

I hope the laboratory session was useful today. I did not have time to look at your developing essays on Wednesday night after class, but I will look at them on Thursday night, and at various points over the holiday.

Each of your papers is different and presents different challenges for writing, but I realized their were two confusions today that most students had.

The first was a confusion created by the Graff & Birkenstein textbook. They show you they say / I say moves that could be used in sentences. Call them small moves. Today I was showing you they say / I say moves that could be used in paragraphs or in entire essays. Call them big moves. Really they are quite the same, but maybe I should have said so specifically.

The second was a confusion created by my outline template. I made it look like the I say had equal weight in your essay, or that you had to make an I say argument in each paragraph. This is not the case. As you can see from my specific instructions yesterday, each of your papers has a few different theys, and there are many options for where to insert your I, and how much.
You can see from my comments in the laboratory session that I like to give lots of advice, but no rules. I am like the doctor who says "take two of these pills and tell me if you feel better." So don't be concerned you are breaking a rule. Like for instance I advised one student to move the Moneyball comparison to the end of the paper. I break my own rules! But I am not leaving you in an ocean of confusion, because I will help you all along. (I can get my American students to trust me like this, but then they all become lawyers and ask me how can I grade fairly if every student is really writing a different essay with different rules and different process. A somewhat interesting question, but I usually respond by asking which is more important, a deviation in your grade that might be something like plus or minus 2%, or you being better at writing?)

Which reminds me, we must finish our discussion of "writing class experiences"! We'll do it in the first Blink session. Have a safe and happy holiday and see you soon.

Bonus: Dynamic "team payroll" vs. "team performance" visualization for Major League Baseball season 2009.

Bonus: Another visualization... this one is Charles Darwin's process of editing the six editions of Origin of Species. Wow!

Bonus: Baseball neo-traditionalist Bill Simmons apologizes and joins the statistical revolution. I say neo-traditionalist because he's only 40 years old and he's known for using edgy humor rather than for 'old man' nostalgia. But this is still an important development. Here is the key quotation: "It's too easy to be informed these days. Takes a lot less time than you might think." Simmons had argued in previous years that he thought the new statistics removed the fun and the aesthetic beauty from baseball; he compared them to "calculus homework." Now he feels (like Bill James and others) that they enhance fun and beauty.

Homework for Lab #1 (Wednesday, 3月31日）

-Read They Say / I Say 42-50
-Create new Google Doc shared with 老師 and complete outline exercise (by Tuesday at 17:00!)

Bonus: Heavenball? A scientific view of "near death experiences."

Bonus: Be glad I didn't give you a summary exercise on this article. It's a bizarre mix of cliches and contradictions about what makes a winning baseball player. I'll try: "Winning baseball players have a special quality? What is it? To find this quality, we talked to winning baseball players. The quality is a winner's mentality, which we can see by the fact that they win." Huh?

Homework for Class #3 (Wednesday, 3月24日）

Great work in yesterday's session! I feel the class is off to a good start now.

Reminder: Read Moneyball from middle of 頁192 - top of 頁205, top of 頁206 - bottom of 頁217, bottom of 頁234 - middle of 頁257, middle of 頁258 - bottom of 頁280 (We will skip a few more player biographies, principally that of Chad Bradford. We will skip the humorous/sentimental epilogue about Jeremy Brown. And we will skip Lewis complaining in the "afterword" about sports journalists who misunderstand his book; implicitly he is comparing them to the dumber traditionalist GMs like Phillips, Minaya, Williams, and Sabean).
Reminder: Read They Say / I Say 30-40
Reminder: Please complete the "debate about student grades" exercise on the previous post... 13 of 13 students have now commented.
Reminder: Please buy Blink from the campus bookstore!
Bonus: We haven't discussed the use of advanced statistics in sports other than baseball, so here is an interesting example. (Wake Forest is where I did my B.A. degree.)

13. (Martin) Philosophical question: what is the purpose of a baseball team?
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14 (Elsa) . If I told you that Billy Beane's two closest professional disciples (Paul DePodesta and J.P. Ricciardi) both failed as general managers, are there any clues in "The Trading Desk" chapter that could help you theorize why?
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15. (Catherine) Once the "student grade debate" exercise is complete, change all of the "says" verbs in each entry to better verbs from the list on 頁39-40. (You can't change the original postings, so just copy them and re-post them with better verbs.)
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16a. (Cathy) In the concluding chapters of Moneyball, Michael Lewis presents an indirect defense of the intuitive or non-quantitative side of baseball. Consider the contrast between the experience of the players and that of the G.M. which you see in "The Trading Desk." Or the contrast between Beane's theories and his own practice. Or the description of the crazy game in "The Human Element" (I saw this on TV at the time and was jumping out of my seat!) Or the intriguing quotation on 頁248 that contends that "every player" is a "sample size [of] one." Give a "closest cliche summary" for Lewis' general argument here. (Maybe pretend you are Joe Morgan?)
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16b (Doll). Instead of a "closest cliche summary," give a "list summary."
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16c. (Alice) Instead of those two bad summaries, give a fair, complex, and commanding (but brief) summary of the kind that Graff & Birkenstein advocate.
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16d. (Kim). Instead of those other kinds, give a "satirical summary" that presents Lewis' true logic but makes it sound ridiculous. (You might imagine yourself as a strong anti-intuitionist like DePodesta or McCracken.)

Homework for Class #2 (Wednesday, 3月17日）

It was nice to meet all of you yesterday! I apologize if the introduction at the start of class was repetitious, but I wanted to make sure we were all "on the same page."

The reading assignment for next week is:

-They Say / I Say 頁19 - middle of 頁28
-Moneyball 頁97- bottom of 頁148, top of 頁152 - middle of 頁157 (The major part I'm deleting is about Scott Hatteberg, whom Lewis features as the type of "the intellectual/scientific baseball player.")

8 (Peter). In Moneyball, Billy Beane finds undervalued players who generate high offensive "on base percentage" and avoids athletic players who are overvalued for their skills at defense. But six years later in the year 2010, he is now buying players who are superior defenders, even if they have lower o.b.p. Explain why (there are two reasons).

9 (Doll). Use the first template on 頁26 of G&B to write a "they say" that compares Billy Beane's theories to the following statement by "Hall of Fame" baseball legend Joe Morgan (who is now a television analyst). The guy that wrote Moneyball can't teach me about the game... If you haven't been on the field, why should I read your book? How can that person teach me about the game? I learn plenty about the game everyday. Every Sunday night I learn something. The game changes almost every day. But I'm still not going to read Moneyball or books written by people who haven't been on the field or really experienced what goes on in the game of baseball... I learned from the best, the legends who played the game. I played alongside so many great players. I'm just not going to read a book in hopes of learning how to play baseball. But this is an everchanging game and I do learn something almost every day. I'm just a former baseball player who is now an analyst. My thoughts are about the game and not technologies and such. Just because somebody writes a book doesn't mean they know the game.

10 (Alice). If I told you that several of the high school players Lewis mentions in Moneyball (e.g. Melvin "B.J." Upton, Scott Kazmir, Zach Greinke) achieved great success in baseball, while many of the college players he mentions (e.g. Jeremy Brown, Luke Hagerty, Ben Fritz, Robert Brownlie, Stephen Obenchain, Bill Murphy, John McCurdy, Steve Stanley, John Baker, Mark Kiger, Brian Stavisky, Shaun Larkin, Brian Colamarino) were great failures , does this invalidate the theory argued by Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta, that drafting college players is more efficient? Why or why not?

11 (Martin). Lewis describes two fields of human enterprise in which quantitative approaches have replaced or are replacing intuitive approaches: financial trading and baseball management. Give an example of another field in which this transition has taken place, is in the process of taking place, or has not taken place (but could). Explain in detail.

12 (Tiara). Let us discuss another labor market somewhat similar to the baseball "draft." Do you think university grades efficiently measure students' intellectual achievement and potential? If you were the hiring manager for a company/organization, would you consider the university grades of your job applicants? How important would they be in making your hiring decision? Start with one of the "implied argument" templates on 頁25 to say what is commonly thought about grades. Then you can agree or disagree with the common thought.

Homework for Class #1 (Wednesday, 3月10日）

-Buy They Say / I Say from NTHU bookstore (or elsewhere)
-Buy Moneyball from NTHU bookstore (or elsewhere)
-Read They Say / I Say 頁1- bottom of 頁11 and the "Putting in Your Oar" section on 頁13-14.
-Read Moneyball 頁6-42, middle of 頁54- bottom of 頁63, bottom of 頁69 - bottom of 頁72, top of 頁76 to bottom of 頁78, top of頁82 - middle of 頁85, bottom of 頁89 - bottom of 頁96. (The parts I removed just tell you more about how Billy Beane never lived up to his promise as a baseball player, and more about how Bill James developed an important theory of baseball statistics that was largely unknown until the 1990s.)
Pages for 中文 edition if you borrow that one from my office: p. 4 比恩年輕時... to the end of p. 45, p. 58 一九九〇年春訓... to the end of p. 68, p. 75 他並非這個理想的原創者... to p. 78 ... 恐怕要精準許多, p. 81 詹姆斯是位唯美主義者... to p. 84 ... 更積極地提出解決之道, p. 88 與詹姆斯來回通信並信服他理念的群眾不斷增加... to p. 91 ... 築起一座高牆 將一切擋在外面, p. 96 直到一九九〇年初期... to the end of p. 103

Homework/Preparation Questions:

Important note... you are only required to prepare an answer for class if your name is next to the question below. However, it will help your preparation to consider all the questions.

1. (Jenny) What is an academic writing "move"? In other words, give your own definition or example of the term "move(s)" on 頁1 of They Say / I Say.
2. (Jenny) Does the social and argumentative style of writing that Graff and Birkenstein explain on 頁3 of They Say / I Say agree with your previous writing instruction (in high school and college)? Or does it disagree? Explain.
3. (Aaron... the other one, ha ha) On 頁8, G&B say that "making statements that nobody can possibly disagree with... is actually a recipe for flat, lifeless writing." They also say that good writing must answer the question "so what?" or "who cares?" Do this philosophy agree with your previous writing instruction (in high school and college)? Or does it disagree? Explain.
4. (Kim) Why did Michael Lewis decide to study baseball? (See especially 頁xiv.)
5. What is "financial determinism" in baseball (頁xii)? Phrase Lewis' disagreement with financial determinism (on 頁xiii and throughout the book) into a "They Say / He Says" template. For example, Many baseball fans think that _________. But Michael Lewis argues in his book Moneyball that _________.
6. (Ting-Ju) What gives traditional baseball scouts and managers their intellectual authority? In other words, how did they get (and keep) their jobs? Why does Billy Beane think this may lead to mistakes, and what source(s) of intellectual authority does he substitute?
7. (Esther) On 頁24, Lewis offers examples of how the traditional baseball scouts and managers speak "a language only faintly resembling English," one that relies on intuitive or non-scientific assumptions. He later explains, when he introduces Bill James, that baseball scouting and management has always been controlled by "insiders," who distrust the new scientific views developed by "outsiders." What we come to see is that the traditional language of baseball probably leads to these insiders making bad decisions, but that it also allows them to monopolize their own power. Can you think of another example in which an insider language is used to monopolize power? Explain.

Textbooks

A student writes: "I went down to the bookstore today, and I was completely dumbfounded by the price of the books."

My response: Yes, I realize that the price of the books is high... I think this is because the book dealer adds a premium for air shipping. I really do apologize for this, and I wish it was not the case.

So, what to do? I will purchase an additional copy of each and make them available for students to borrow. Also it is OK with me if you purchase a copy with one other student and share together.

Welcome!

This is the course blog for our Writing class. I will use it to post announcements and homework questions. You will use it to post your homework answers, and any questions you might have for me.

So it would be helpful if every student could post one test "comment" by clicking below. This way I will know whether you are able to use the blog successfully. (If you do not have a Google or Blogger account, it may be necessary to create one.)

I look forward to meeting all of you soon.

Announcement: There will be no class meeting on 2/24. The class will meet with the TA (Ms. Chen) on 3/3 to do a diagnostic writing assignment. Aaron will return to teach the class on 3/10 and thereafter.

Syllabus: You can read a preview copy here. I will print you a finalized copy on 3/3. But if you notice any mistakes in the syllabus, or any confusing parts, or if you have any suggestions for improving it, now is a good time to tell me! (You can use the comment feature below.)

Textbooks: If you've seen the syllabus, you know that there are several books to purchase for the class. Unfortunately, I've been having some problems with the order because none of them were available in Taiwan. So we will not be reading Easy Writer at all. Black Swan should arrive in time for later in the semester. But Moneyball, They Say I Say, and Blink will arrive to the bookstore on 3/3, so please buy them!