Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

Methinks this post is blogging as chore-avoidance. There is only one solution to real-world packing problems, and it involves perspiration and swear words.

Get those bags packed!

Don't forget your international modem so you can continue posting. Or use your cell phone.

Use DHL to mail the books to you at the hotel where you plan to stay.

Brad illustrates why I think (as I posted last week) that Operations Research is probably a very minor part of the productivity story:

> There is no solution to the packing problem for my forthcoming trip to Italy.

...

> Maybe if I demanded electronic copies of all the theses and chapters...

The most sophisticated OR won't give you an answer much better than the one you figured out already: it's not feasible to bring all the books with you. At best, an exact optimization will show you how stuff in a book or two more than you could just by starting with biggest items first and fiddling around till you get a tight fit. In a close competition, OR could give you a small edge, so it *is* relevant, but focusing on that is missing the big picture.

On the other hand, technology has potentially enabled you to do it anyway--but in a way that's not interesting from an OR standpoint. By using your laptop as a compact information storage and retrieval device, you change the parameters of the problem. This has a far greater payoff than using the computer as an "electronic brain" (intentional 50s parlance) that will show you how to pack your luggage more effectively than any human could do.

A lot of the productivity gains from computers have little to do with computation (sadly). Take something like a spreadsheet. The magic is that you have something like a ledger book that updates automatically. With the ledger, you can do all the same things, but very slowly. A computer with a procedural programming language can do all the calculations just as fast, but it's hard to use compared to a ledger. But once you have the idea behind a spreadsheet, there's nothing to it in terms of algorithms, optimization techniques etc. And a spreadsheet is an example from before we were all connected on the internet. The interconnectedness factor blows the others away in terms of payoff.

It strikes me that most gains from computers come not from having them do things that only computers do well, but rather from having them do the things that people have done for centuries, like book-keeping, mail delivery, filing, etc. In some cases (e.g. spell checking) computers don't do it nearly as well as people do. But because they do it orders of magnitude faster, and for free, they are often preferable.

Insist on electronic copies of the chapters, and make sure they are in Word or Wordperfect (not pdf). That way you can use "track changes" to make edits/comments.

Hey, I just came back from Tuscany, spent 2 weeks there. Incidentally, a few of days ago (while still in Tuscany) I bought a copy of the Financial Times and read an article by Brad Delong there - something about Greenspan and interest rates. Was it you?

What Phill said.

There is a solution: DHL.

What Phil said

What? Dissertations not in binary form, in this day and age? Electronic editions of books and papers not only greatly simplify the packing process but provide excellent reading opprotunites during travel . A PDA loaded with several books makes you look forward to airport lines and long flights. I find that I only carry a magazine or two of dead tree reading material, to cover the "no personal electronic devices" portions of each flight. With a 512 MB flash device in your PDA you can carry the equivalent of a pickup truck full of compressed books.

What treetop said, if you know exactly where you'llbe when.

I priced the send the books thing, and it was really expensive.

I'd much rather give my committee electronic copies, it saves me money and time. I'm sure your students would be amenable.

As to modems and such, don't. Find a semi-seedy part of town with a student population and an internet cafe. Cost is low, people are interesting and the coffee is occasionally good.

If you're there long enough, you can mail some of the things you want to yourself. But then you'd have to either leave them there or mail them back. OTOH, once you look at the theses you might either mail them back with comments or discard them anway.

Take the theses and the autobiography. If you like the latter enough to want them autographed, they'd have bits you can re-read. Besides, you'd be in *Italy* - surely you would enjoy the place while you are there, right?

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What would it cost to have the reading material "scanned" into your computer as compared to having them shipped back and forth?

whatever you need while here in Italy, I'll be ready to help

Man, chill in Italy, read the theses (unavoidable) but surely in a beautiful country with great food and wine, interesting people and a history going back to the beginings of it all literally standing in front of you you will find something more interesting than lugging several thousand pages of writing around with you!

From the Department of WTF, Brad DeLong shows once again how incredibly stupid Ph.Ds and economists are.

I'll take that back if you vouch that even one of those econ theses was hand typed onto that incredibly expensive thesis paper.

What's the usual format for economics theses? In the physics/cs/math world it's LaTeX, which is compact and readily convertable into whatever format is easiest for your laptop/PDA.

My advice is don't pack what you can buy over there. The book about Hamilton? Return it and buy it there. Contact solution, toothpaste, shampoo...these things add up in terms of weight and space and can all be found in one location. Roll your clothes and stuff, stuff, stuff!

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