[HN Gopher] Harvard Railroad Economics Exam (1906)
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Harvard Railroad Economics Exam (1906)
Author : tomrod
Score : 96 points
Date : 2024-06-16 05:33 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.irwincollier.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.irwincollier.com)
| remarkEon wrote:
| Amusing to me that Minneapolis was important enough at the time
| that Harvard put it on an exam.
| landosaari wrote:
| Cursory search yields two things: Flour mills [0] and railway
| system [1]
|
| [0] https://www.mnhs.org/millcity/learn/history/flour-milling
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)
| engineer_22 wrote:
| Why
| dylan604 wrote:
| Ignorant of facts would be a good answer
| germinalphrase wrote:
| Only amusing if you don't know anything about Minneapolis,
| western expansion, or railroads.
| miklonhyne wrote:
| That is very different from what "economics" is today.
| throwaway211 wrote:
| Quite different from then too.
|
| But as 'Railway Economy', it does align with the ancient
| meaning.
|
| Like the word is used today in 'modern' subjects, Green
| Economy, Circular Economy (which is _not_ Circular Flow), etc.
|
| BTW, welcome, new user.
| scoopertrooper wrote:
| Seems they're using it in the same sense as home economics.
| throw0101d wrote:
| > _That is very different from what "economics" is today._
|
| _Oikonomia_ originally referred to the 'running of a
| household':
|
| > _The earlier term for the discipline was 'political economy',
| but since the late 19th century, it has commonly been called
| 'economics'.[22] The term is ultimately derived from Ancient
| Greek oikonomia (oikonomia) which is a term for the "way
| (nomos) to run a household (oikos)", or in other words the
| know-how of an oikonomikos (oikonomikos), or "household or
| homestead manager". Derived terms such as "economy" can
| therefore often mean "frugal" or "thrifty".[23][24][25][26] By
| extension then, "political economy" was the way to manage a
| polis or state._
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics#Definitions_of_econo...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconomicus (Xenophon)
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_(Aristotle)
|
| > _The term 'economics' was previously known as political
| 'economy'. This term evolved from the French Mercantilist usage
| of economie politique, which expanded the notion of economy
| from the ancient Greek concept of household management, to the
| national level, as the public administration of state affairs.
| James Stuart (1767) authored the first book in English with
| 'political economy' in its title_ [...]
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_economics
|
| The household here being a company.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Wow. Looks like Harvard's Class of 1906-ish was expected to
| understand and operate parts of the real-world economy.
|
| In America.
|
| How times have changed!
| alephnerd wrote:
| The snark is uncalled for, especially because Harvard _does_
| have a (fairly decent) engineering program at the undergrad
| level, as well as the fact that the 2 most popular
| concentrations are Econ and CS.
|
| Nor does this kind of snark actually add any value to the
| discussion in HN and clearly breaks multiple rules of HN [0]
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| uoaei wrote:
| Do you disagree? I understand the scolding and you may
| consider it irrelevant to answer my question but I am curious
| about the intentions of those who push back in this way.
| eganist wrote:
| > Do you disagree? I understand the scolding and you may
| consider it irrelevant to answer _my_ question but I am
| curious about the intentions of those who push back in this
| way.
|
| Meta-question on the emphasis above: are you (uoaei) and
| bell-cot the same user?
| stevenae wrote:
| I think this was a confusing use of "this".
| alephnerd wrote:
| > Do you disagree
|
| Read the first paragraph
|
| > about the intentions of those who push back in this way
|
| Follow the HN guidelines (I myself have fallen foul of them
| on occasion).
|
| Low quality snark is not the kind of discourse that has
| value on this forum.
|
| And eaganist brings up a good point.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| And of course you feel like it's your job to tell others
| what has value and what not? Why do you feel the
| entitlement to this?
| eganist wrote:
| It's probably coming from frustration with non-
| contributive commentary, of which the topmost comment
| unquestionably qualifies.
|
| It's in poor form to do citizen-policing pretty much
| anywhere let alone _an internet forum,_ but I won 't
| begrudge the user their frustrations over something
| that's undeniably a problem.
|
| Heh.
| _zoltan_ wrote:
| The comment you've replied is not wrong. The submission
| shows real world knowledge vs a lot of folks coming out
| today without any practical knowledge, just theoretical.
| This is what OP talked about.
| eganist wrote:
| > The submission shows real world knowledge
|
| Compared to what specifically? It helps to find relevant,
| comparable examples of electives in major areas of
| economic impact and demonstrating how these modern
| electives fail to do what you described.
|
| > vs a lot of folks coming out today without any
| practical knowledge, just theoretical.
|
| This isn't a direct comparison. But if we were to make
| this comparison more direct (e.g "more people were
| prepared in 1907 for application of practical knowledge
| than today), it's also in need of substance. How much is
| "a lot"? What is practical knowledge, and how can you be
| sure that the knowledge taught isn't practical?
|
| From the modern curricula linked elsewhere in the thread,
| it looks like quite a few courses are directly relevant
| to operationalization in their domains.
| bell-cot wrote:
| "Like previous graduates, most seniors plan to hold jobs in
| the finance, consulting, and technology sectors..." -
| https://features.thecrimson.com/2021/senior-survey/after-
| har...
|
| "The majority -- 58 percent -- of Harvard's graduating class
| will immediately enter the workforce, and more than half will
| take jobs in finance, tech, or consulting..." -
| https://features.thecrimson.com/2024/senior-survey/after-
| har...
|
| And look at their current Economics electives -
|
| https://economics.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/e.
| ..
|
| - which, if you're going into finance, consulting, public
| policy, or political ideology, look great. But if you want to
| understand or manage a real-physical-world company? _Maybe_
| Econ 1745 - "Corporate Finance" would be useful?
|
| And Harvard's own numbers here -
| https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/05/harvard-
| award... - suggest that that "fairly decent" engineering
| program is a puny fraction of the undergraduate population.
| And maybe has a pretty poor RoI on its Harvard-sized tuition,
| given that Harvard feels the need to argue that prospective
| applicants shouldn't just ignore it, in favor of well-known
| engineering programs, because "community and location":
| https://college.harvard.edu/student-life/student-
| stories/why...
| eganist wrote:
| > https://economics.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/file
| s/e...
|
| > which, if you're going into finance, consulting, public
| policy, or political ideology, look great. But if you want
| to understand or manage a real-physical-world company?
| Maybe Econ 1745 - "Corporate Finance" would be useful?
|
| Are you saying that the "Railroad Practice" elective is
| directly comparable to the "Corporate Finance" elective of
| today?
|
| If anything, I'd say that Railroad Practice is best
| compared to "Using Big Data to Solve Economic and Social
| Problems" in that they're both focused on some of the
| biggest economic facilitators of their respective days,
| rail and data science. And Harvard's other electives seem
| similarly tailored, allowing people to get a grasp of
| fields of practice that can yield them a substantial
| advantage in practice, e.g in leveraging globalization or
| serving underserved markets.
|
| Your other points aren't comparative to the Harvard of the
| day but rather speculative ("a puny fraction" and its
| suggested impact), so there's not much I can do to speak to
| them.
|
| ---
|
| Tangent: it'd be an interesting analytic exercise to
| compare courses and curricula year by year and see what
| percentage of electives have generalized, what percentage
| have specialized, and to get a better grasp of how a
| school's programs are both adapting to and anticipating
| current and future economics landscapes.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Here's the class page for "Using Big Data to Solve
| Economic and Social Problems"
|
| It's a good course (I had mentees who took it)
|
| https://opportunityinsights.org/course/
| alephnerd wrote:
| > And look at their current Economics electives - https://e
| conomics.harvard.edu/sites/hwpi.harvard.edu/files/e... -
| which, if you're going into finance, consulting, public
| policy, or political ideology, look great. But if you want
| to understand or manage a real-physical-world company?
| Maybe Econ 1745 - "Corporate Finance" would be useful?
|
| A pure Econ degree doesn't put you on management or
| leadership tracks in most companies.
|
| Most are practitioners who were sponsored by their employer
| to attend an MBA, or were recruited out of college for an
| LDP (eg. Abbvie and UIUC CS/Biotech, Danaher and CMU MechE,
| P&G and CMU/UMich/OSU/UIUC ChemE/MechE).
|
| The employment stats you provided aren't anymore different
| from similar peer programs with an Engineering bias like UC
| Berkeley [0], UCLA [1], or UW [2].
|
| Finance, High Tech, and Consulting are always the trifecta
| for high paying white collar jobs no matter which program
| you attend.
|
| I think you have this weird notion or stereotype that it's
| only "HAHVAD" grad that run the world like an evil cabal.
| In reality, there are plenty of equally selective public
| schools with similar outcomes and that have a similar
| impact (eg. The ones I listed above).
|
| [0] - https://career.berkeley.edu/employers/learn-about-
| the-campus...
|
| [1] - https://admission.ucla.edu/explore/student-outcomes
|
| [2] - https://careers.uw.edu/outcomes/
| eganist wrote:
| > How times have changed!
|
| Have they? What's changed, specifically, in Harvard's various
| programs in the last 118 years that lead you to your implied
| conclusion that their business and economics curricula have
| worsened?
| treyd wrote:
| Business classes, especially at institutions like Harvard and
| Sloan, have shifted their focus dramatically towards finance
| and upper management concerns and away from real boots-on-
| ground business operations.
| washadjeffmad wrote:
| A friend and MIT alum went back through Sloan for a
| foundation he felt he needed to assemble a venture around
| IP he'd developed. Approaching it again after, he told me
| effectively what you described - while he felt he got
| "executive training", after trying and failing, it didn't
| provide practical knowledge to build and manage a
| successful operation.
|
| Instead, he hopped in the helm of an existing company and
| has done well enough with it. It was superset training, in
| the end.
| notahacker wrote:
| But half the questions here are less about ensuring
| competency to make decisions and more basic definitional
| stuff manual workers that didn't finish high school would
| presumably be expected to pick up after a couple of weeks
| on the job. Don't think we'd be raising standards if we
| dropped all the calculus and statistics knowledge
| requirements in a modern Econ course in favour of "name
| three web technologies" and "describe the difference
| between an Account Executive and and SDR"
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think you might get a more sensible response if you
| change it to: Describe the differences between the two
| primary web architectures and the pro's and con's of
| each.
|
| If you replace a good question with a bad one, regardless
| of the subject, you've made the exam worse.
|
| The problem being that econ people will be in positions
| later where having that knowledge matter.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Very easy to give a fact-free hot take, but I thought I'd take
| a look at the "research" section of Harvard's economics
| department website at the moment[1] to see what they work on.
| I'm not an economist but it seems like a pretty serious attempt
| to understand the real-world economy. Picking a paper purely at
| random (again, I'm not an economist so I just clicked through a
| few and they seem similar-ish to me in a broad sense) this[2]
| is a pretty serious analysis of industrial policy with some
| real-world case studies about the Oxford-AstraZeneca
| partnership around the covid vaccine, German industrial policy
| given the transition from heavy industry to climate tech and
| some stuff about how Israel has created a favourable climate
| for tech startups. That not real-world enough for you?
|
| [1] https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/research-papers
|
| [2]
| https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.ed...
| mhh__ wrote:
| Well the point was about students not researchers afaict.
|
| There's a difference between Harvard (or any powerful
| equivalent) the research establishment and Harvard the school
| for training America's new elite.
|
| Most of the economics students I know (especially the Harvard
| ones) would not surprise the PC at all.
|
| As a subject it doesn't attract particularly serious people.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Those are research papers. But these kinds of case studies
| aren't unusual at the undergrad level even at state schools.
| The rubric and results are not as in-depth or built out as
| published research. Usually the question for these exercises
| or papers are built on research publications so the
| professors have answers to grade yours against.
| huitzitziltzin wrote:
| (Former) econ prof here (now in industry), though definitely
| not at Harvard.
|
| To be honest "draw a map of a rail yard" or "write up a
| waybill" does not seem like the kind of exam material _college
| students_ should be engaging in in 2024. The standard is higher
| now, a lot of the material more difficult and the questions
| have changed. The material being tested on that exam looks like
| middle-high school in parts?
|
| In an _intro_ economics class I'd like students to understand
| what we (think we) know about supply and demand and apply it to
| relevant public policy issues - housing supply, taxation of
| vices, etc. I'd like them to discuss policy trade offs.
|
| "Railroad economics" was presumably an elective, where the
| standards now would be even higher than in my intro class.
| queuebert wrote:
| Having actually taught economics undergrads at Harvard,
| albeit in a science elective, I can the standards are not
| quite so high as you might think.
| hellodang_ wrote:
| Based listbert sweeping in to derail the discussion
| bell-cot wrote:
| High-level theory is nice. Ditto public policy savvy. And
| quite a few of the other questions on the 1906 exam reflect
| that.
|
| But back at the coal face -
|
| Rail yards were a _very_ important and expensive part of a
| ~1906 railroad 's infrastructure - both to build, and to
| operate. And the efficiency differences between a well-
| designed and poorly-designed yard were huge. A prospective RR
| manager who can't quickly map out a good rail yard is someone
| who simply _does not understand_ the at-scale operation of a
| railroad.
|
| Similarly, waybills were the core document for moving
| individual customer's loads around on an RR. If (fake name)
| EconoAir's manager at your local airport did not understand
| Flight Plans well enough to quickly draw one up - would you
| want to own EconoAir's stock, or fly on their airplanes?
| nwiswell wrote:
| > If (fake name) EconoAir's manager at your local airport
| did not understand Flight Plans well enough to quickly draw
| one up - would you want to own EconoAir's stock, or fly on
| their airplanes?
|
| So since universities obviously do not focus on teaching
| that material, do you suppose that people in positions of
| authority at airlines don't understand flight plans?
|
| Universities are institutions of higher learning, you can
| acquire the industry-specific mundane details on the job.
|
| If you used Scheme in your CS program, you can figure out
| whatever tech stack your company is using. It's really not
| any different.
| fishyninja wrote:
| There certainly are both bachelor and master programs for
| airline management, air traffic control, cargo
| management, airline safety, etc.
|
| https://www.vaughn.edu/degrees-programs/bachelors-
| degrees/ai...
| IIAOPSW wrote:
| The issue seems to be one of terminology. The questions on
| the exam (and thus topic of the course) appear to be about
| technical competence at a handful of skills highly specific
| to the railroad industry. That's fine and valuable, but its
| not what most people would describe as "economics". I
| wouldn't expect the skills taught in an "economics" class
| to be concerned with the specific price of shipping a very
| particular bill of goods on a very specific line on a very
| particular railroad. I wouldn't expect "economics" to mean
| the fine grain details of the practical engineering
| challenges in laying out track. I would expect "economics"
| to mean some sort of underlying analysis of railroad
| pricing and capital expenditure practices.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| just accepting the demand supply curve mantra is accepting a
| lot of consumerism dogma. and the math is not even that
| solid, as you know very well.
| giantg2 wrote:
| What exactly isn't solid about it? Like most things, the
| theory may have exceptions and it isn't the only force at
| play. However, things like finding theoretical price points
| for a basic product based on demand, supply, and pricing is
| well established as a concept. The math behind it is very
| simple. When we get incorrect results, it's usually because
| one of the input numbers didn't match what we observed in
| reality, not because of an actual math issue.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| it presumes some huge things.
|
| like, that selling light bulbs that expire in weeks is
| better for the supply curve.
|
| or presumes that workers might never beat the prisoners
| dilemma and the central banks will always keep the
| correct unemployment rate.
|
| or that consumers will never make any informed purchase
| and will always drive process to bottom for a good demand
| curve.
|
| etc.
|
| the thing is, it works very well, because the system
| accepted that dogma just like feudalism accepted looks
| were ordained from god, despite having to hold an army to
| keep god's word... so the models work, but you must
| accept the whole theology, which is never mentioned in
| any level of economics (well, it's briefly mentioned as
| tools in development economy)
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Would students of the time have learned about these things at
| any time before Harvard?
|
| I think at the time this represented key aspect of the
| business that someone _managing_ it should know about.
| Nowadays things may be too diverse and complex for people to
| learn, or be taught such specifics in college, but people
| taking senior positions in any companies still do a much
| better job if they know how the business works from the
| bottom up.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Why build something when you can leverage your social status to
| take ownership from others and profit off it indiscriminately
| with minimal effort - i.e. Finance and Upper Management.
| taspeotis wrote:
| > Answer 1, 2, 3, and five other questions
|
| Where's 2 and 3? The question numbered 4 seems to be referred to
| as (2) in the question numbered 5
| meithecatte wrote:
| I have heard of at least one instance of an exam a while ago,
| where some questions - ones that need diagrams in their
| statement - would be written onto the blackboard in the exam
| room, due to limitations of the duplication techniques used for
| the exam paper.
| jnordwick wrote:
| Based test. There is this mix of practical knowledge (different
| types or cars, terminals, etc), but also theory and history or
| how other country's rail system worked at the time and why they
| developed in that way. The last question is incredibly good:
|
| > Compare the experience of France with state railroad operation
| with that of Germany. What, in each case were the causes which
| led to state operation, the extent of the lines operated, the
| results from state operation, and the reasons for those results?
| umvi wrote:
| Sorry, I guess being in my 30s makes me old because I have no
| idea what "based" means even after looking it up. I originally
| thought it was a typo for "biased", but then I see other people
| using the word in the same thread
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40699295)
| Animats wrote:
| Even the rapper usage doesn't seem to be very relevant
| here.[1]
|
| [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/based
| fiatpandas wrote:
| >The shipment to be sent "collect," and the Chicago &
| Northwestern to get one-third of the total rate
|
| Makes me think of "call collect" - might be a borrowed term from
| railroad payment terminology since phone company history if very
| strongly connected to railroad networks.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is this different from COD?
| wsh wrote:
| Yes. "Freight collect" means the recipient pays the carrier
| for transportation; it implies nothing about payment for the
| goods.
|
| "COD" (collect on delivery) means the carrier collects a
| specified amount of money--typically, the price of the goods
| plus transportation--from the recipient, on behalf of the
| seller, as a condition of delivery.
| Animats wrote:
| Shipments can be sent with freight paid by the sender or to be
| paid by the recipient.
|
| Railroads, pre-computer, had tough operational accounting
| problems. Even with telegraphs, they didn't have enough
| bandwidth in 1906 to transmit all the paperwork ahead of the
| shipment. Some of the paperwork was actually nailed to the side
| of freight cars, like a mailing label.
|
| Each car had a waybill. Each train had a manifest of which car
| contained what and where it was going. At each switch yard,
| cars were re-sorted by destination and attached to a train
| going in the appropriate direction, and that process was guided
| by the manifest of the incoming train. Cabooses and freight
| conductors were where the paperwork was managed. That's what
| cabooses were for - the paperwork traveled with the train, and
| the freight conductor was responsible for it.
|
| Copies of the manifests went to accounting offices where
| interline settlements were computed. That's where the Chicago &
| Northwestern was credited with one-third of the total rate.
| Interline shipments were complicated. Every month or so,
| railroads would settle with their connecting roads over who
| owed who how much. Probably with arguments between the various
| lines.
|
| There was a lot of interline settling. If a railroad car is on
| another railroad's tracks, there's a rental charge. If a
| railroad car needs repair when away from its home road, it gets
| repaired by the railroad it's on, and the owning road is billed
| at a standard flat rate. All this still happens today. Here are
| the modern rules.[1]
|
| That's part of what a Harvard economics student had to
| understand for Railroad Practice. The money followed the trains
| around, much later. Somebody had to make sure that the money
| didn't get lost.
|
| Today, US inter-line settlements are handled by Railinc, which
| is a unit of the Association of American Railroads. Waybills
| travel around as JSON and there are APIs for submitting and
| retrieving them. Waybills still do pretty much what they did in
| 1906. There are still dispute resolution procedures for when
| the records of connecting lines don't match. Settlement is
| still monthly. And the time limits for resolving errors are
| still measured in months.
|
| [1]
| https://public.railinc.com/sites/default/files/documents/RAR...
| viburnum wrote:
| Here's an excellent history of american economics and the role
| the railroads played in it:
|
| https://nyupress.org/9781583671351/railroading-economics
| Bloating wrote:
| Sure, it works in the real world but does it work in theory? (an
| old economics joke)
| rocketvole wrote:
| is there an answers sheet somewhere as well?
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