Monday, September 16, 2013

Those poor people want more money

Economics/Sociology Phrase Book by Jeffrey A. Smith and Kermit Daniel. Pretty funny.
To see how to use the phrase book, consider the sentence
Those poor people need more money.
Look up the word "need" in the Sociology column and replace it with the corresponding economics term, to form the translated sentence
Those poor people want more money.
Wasn't that easy? Next time you want to talk to a Sociologist, or - perish the thought - read an article in a Sociology journal, just keep the phrase book handy and you'll have no trouble at all.
The first few translations:
Sociological Term or Phrase translated to the Economics Term or Phrase
rational behavior - the use of decision rules based on explicit mathematical calculation, combined with a utility function in which monetary wealth is the only argument.
need - want
different value orientations - laziness
is correlated with - is correlated with
determines - is correlated with
is caused by - is correlated with

Love the capture of the confusion regarding correlation.

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