Monday, December 19, 2005

The Best Christmas Present You Can Give a Young Person

Smash their calculator(s).

I am semi-serious.

Last week I had several first-year university students complain because I will not let them use calculators on exams, and they did not know how to calculate a present value problem which was basically the following:

NPV = 1210/(1 + .1) + 1210/(1 + .1)(1 + .1) - 2000

I know I seem like a curmudgeon, but this reaction from university students (who presumably had "A" averages in secondary school) is frightening and discouraging.

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