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Why I Don't Throw Out Stuff

My stats notes from 2000 were more useful than any notes I took in class this semester. I like the prof a lot, but law professors, even when they have PhDs in Economics and presumably had some training teaching undergrads as TA's, are terrible at teaching undergraduate courses.

And that Freedman/Pisani/Purves stats book, while readable, takes 17 chapters to cover what 6-7 chapters of the Agresti/Finlay book covers, just in a more verbose way that doesn't get to what I want--the formula!--fast enough. In a rudimentary "stats for idiots" type class, sometimes belaboring a point is pedagogically worse. Make it, make it clear, and move on.

So yes, through all the hard drive crashes, I am glad that I still keep syllabi and hard-copy outlines, class notes and materials. There's something to being a pack rat.

In other news, my handwriting hasn't changed much in eight years, although now it's less neat and pretty, because now I hardly ever write anymore.

And in other other news, a bunch of law professors finally get Michael Clayton on Netflix and finally review a movie that has been out for months. Never invite a law prof to a trivia contest weighted heavily in pop culture. Also, I tend to disagree with a lot of the reviews, mainly for misquoting the movie (they say "I am Shiva, god of death", and yes, they get the death god part wrong, but they never said goddess, although it makes me wonder why the movie-makers didn't use the correct "destruction," which sounds so much better, and it makes me wonder why on earth I ever read the Mahabarata and the Upanishads--the latter just to "get" The Wasteland better) and ignoring the moral complexity and moral conflicts of the movie for the quick civil procedure answer. Dude, it's just a movie, and dude, it is a more than a movie about lawyers. Get over yourself, and surrender your role in service to the narrative.

Full post as published by Law and Letters on March 05, 2008 (boomark / email).