Larry E. Jones

Chari Jones Workshop

One of the fun and interesting features of graduate education in Economics at Minnesota is the system of PhD student workshops that are run. This has been a feature of the department for many years and gives -- maybe forces? -- students who are working on dissertations to stand up in front of their peers and a couple of faculty members and talk about their work, often when it is in preliminary stages.
A Special Presentation Tarhan 5/9/07 The Slides The Movie		More Workshop Photos
Stefania Marcassa presents research.		This can be a trying experience even for the most confident student, but most come away viewing it as a learning experience. There are times when that learning is tough though..... see below for some of the worst examples..... But, it's all worth it for the beer and pizza at the end of each semester!
Some of the most famous lines from the CJ workshop: Adi Omer was presenting his stuff. Larry asked if he tried to do [...] to which Adi said that he tried for a week but then stopped because it was hard. Larry's response was: "Have you seen my house? Have you seen Chari's house? Economics is ******* hard, you can't just work on a problem for a few days and then give up!" -- Larry Jones "Not every fact needs a model. For example people who work with computers often wear glasses and people who pick bananas don't wear shoes.  Do we need a model about this fact?" -- Michele Boldrin "If I were giving this talk..." "History?! I don't care about history, it's just a bunch of dead people!" -- Chari "It's all fine, but is it going to light up the room? Is it going to get people excited about your stuff?" "Represent your idea in form of proposition: IF [...] THEN [...]. If THEN is interesting enough then it's worth thinking about IF's. So, what your THEN?"		Members of the Workshop listen carefully.
Yuan Jia, Ka Fai Li, Edgar Preugschat with Anderson Schneider and Roozbeh Hosseini in the foreground. Simona Cociuba, Laurence Ales, and Lukasz Drozd		"All you're doing is showing us a bunch of random facts that aren't connected -- let's get to the model." (This one has been said so many times that t-shirts have been made up!) Click on the t-shirt to see a larger version.
"What is the question?" (or more accurately. . . . . . . . "I can't decide how much of this I need to remember unless I know what your research question is.") "Why do we care?" ("Why would anyone think this is an interesting research question?") "What is the answer?" ("State your results up front. This is research, not a mystery story.")		Larry Jones, Chari, and some of the group.
Simge Tarhan, Stefania Marcassa, Anderson Schneider, and Laurence Ales		"Only about one in seven projects work out to become a good paper. You have to keep trying. " "What is your question?" "Great question, what is your answer?" "And just why can't you take that to the data?" "Which number are you talking about? There are 30 numbers in that table! Pick one, and tell me what it means ... " On seeing a slide entitled 'Related Literature' -- " next slide " Sudoku anyone? "A good theory is an artful construction of minimalistic models."

More Photos from the Workshop
Hakki Yazici and Laurence Ales presenting	Photos from the Chari Jones Workshop taken in May 2007		Larry and Hakki observe Chari
Facundo Piguillem and Anderson Schneider		Hakki presents
Larry listens to the presentations (mouse over the picture)		The group
After the Workshop
After the seminar	Jaromir Nosal and Roozbeh Hosseini