5 ms·
Harvard Railroad Economics Exam (1906)
- remarkEon 2y agoAmusing to me that Minneapolis was important enough at the time that Harvard put it on an exam.
- landosaari 2y agoCursory search yields two things: Flour mills [0] and railway system [1] [0] https://www.mnhs.org/millcity/learn/history/flour-milling https://www.mnhs.org/millcity/learn/history/flour-milling [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Northern_Railway_(U.S.)
- engineer_22 2y agoWhy
- dylan604 2y agoIgnorant of facts would be a good answer
- germinalphrase 2y agoOnly amusing if you don’t know anything about Minneapolis, western expansion, or railroads.
- remarkEon 2y agoNo, I grew up there (though I was born in Iowa). I was making a comment about how usually Harvard and the like forget about places like Minnesota. So it's amusing in the sense that you have to go back to 1906 to find a time when they don't.
- miklonhyne 2y agoThat is very different from what "economics" is today.
- throwaway211 2y agoQuite 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 2y agoSeems they're using it in the same sense as home economics.
- throw0101d 2y ago> 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 οἰκονομία (oikonomia) which is a term for the "way (nomos) to run a household (oikos)", or in other words the know-how of an οἰκονομικός (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_economics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics#Definitions_of_econo... * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconomicus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oeconomicus (Xenophon) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_(Aristotle) 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 économie 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 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_economics The household here being a company.
- bell-cot 2y agoWow. 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 2y agoThe 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- uoaei 2y agoDo 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.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- eganist 2y ago> 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 2y agoI think this was a confusing use of "this".
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- taspeotis 2y ago> 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 2y agoI 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.
- c6400sc 2y agoI'm guessing one of these questions had to deal with a timetabling diagram. https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0003zP https://www.edwardtufte.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=...
- jnordwick 2y agoBased 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 2y agoSorry, 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 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40699295)
- Animats 2y agoEven the rapper usage doesn't seem to be very relevant here.[1] [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/based https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/based
- xx-bean-xx 2y agoit means "I like this." it originally meant "this is agreeable with my conservative politics" but the youth (me) think it's funny to use it more generally
- strken 2y agoIt originally meant "acting like a crackhead". The root word "base" comes from freebasing cocaine. It's undergone significant evolution since then, obviously, but its spike in popularity amongst the far right was just one twist in its etymological journey.
- sdwr 2y agoTo me, it means "a unique take that cuts through the noise and displays a strong fundamental understanding of the core issues". That is often perverted/softened into "agreeing with me".
- fiatpandas 2y ago>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 2y agoIs this different from COD?
- wsh 2y agoYes. “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 2y agoShipments 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.pdf https://public.railinc.com/sites/default/files/documents/RAR...
- viburnum 2y agoHere’s an excellent history of american economics and the role the railroads played in it: https://nyupress.org/9781583671351/railroading-economics https://nyupress.org/9781583671351/railroading-economics
- Bloating 2y agoSure, it works in the real world but does it work in theory? (an old economics joke)
- rocketvole 2y agois there an answers sheet somewhere as well?
- CraigRo 2y agoA poling yard is one where the tea cars are sorted by pushing them with a pole using an engine on an adjacent track. They are banned today