First day back after spring break. The break happened just as we were getting into the hard part of the discussion of mean, median and mode for grouped data. I’m sure many folks have forgotten where we left off. I know I took a real break, and didn’t do any of the catching up I’d planned for both my courses.

The syllabus says we start linear models today. I don’t particularly want to teach linear models. They’re not really useful in the way I want the course material to be. If they weren’t on the common final I’d skip them entirely, and move directly to taxation (in time for April 15). Maybe I’ll do that anyway.

… and that’s what I did. We had a very spirited class on taxes. There were many exclamations like “how could it be like that” and “why is it like that” and “that’s not fair”. In each case I could restate the point of the class and the course: in order to make good political and moral arguments about tax policy, you should begin by knowing the quantitative facts!

If I really had the courage of my convictions about the tradeoff I made in this class – skip linear models as a topic and move directly to taxes – I’d rewrite the book chapter that way.

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