New Year!

Happy New Year!

Investing for Beginners

A Quarter in Review 

I noticed I haven't been here for a while. After the first round of midterms, I did not write as much as I would've liked. This quarter has been busy. While taking four classes, though the fourth one is once a week, and tutoring students, I also developed a club idea. The club, which is now official, is about finance. Over the past couple of years, I developed an interest in finance, but never really explored it in depth. As a way to learn while I studied at school, I created this club so I could learn and explain concepts and tools to others.

Investing for Beginners

Investing for Beginners will be a series of blog posts. Since I know only the surface of finance and investing, this will be an exploration of different topics within finance including equities, ETFs, mutual funds, derivatives, etc. Hopefully, this blog will be informative and useful.

Economics: Looking at the Solow Model 2

In my last economics post, we looked at three equations:

Y= AK^αL^1-α
Y= C + I
K_t+1=K_t + I - dK_t

and turned the capital accumulation equation into this:

sY=dK_t

Now, we're going to plug it into the production function so we can determine the optimal amount of K.

To do so,


sY=dK_t ---------> Y=dK/s

From now on, I'm going to remove the t subscript, mainly because it's a hassle to type. So,

dK/s=AK^αL^1-α

K = sAK^αL^1-α/d

K^1-α = sAL^1-α/d

K = (sAL^1-α/d)^1/(1-α)

We can now simplify the equation further:

K=L* (sA/d)^1/(1-α)

So now, what does this tell us? It tells us the steady state.

I currently don't have a graph nor the time to make one online, so I will provide this:
Simple Solow Model at Wolfram

In the next batch of notes, I will go over the basic assumptions of Solow Model, as I have neglected to do so in the first set. I will also look at the per capita equations, and transition dynamics.

A Checklist

I really want to accomplish some things before this year is over. After watching and being inspired by so many things, I find myself consumed by so many ideas. In a film, I was introduced to the resilient nature of an idea. In a real life example, I saw how much damage and beauty that idea created. So, here is a checklist of what I want to do, at this moment:

Learn more programming. Plain and simple :)
Learn more Chinese.
Get an internship this summer. Preferably with a company that everyone hates, but I still love. Hint: They were the subject of a recent Buffet discussion.
Write a story. Details of my story are somewhere in this blog.
Go hiking. I live near the woods. I need to hike.

And that's it. For the moment.

Economics: Looking at the Solow Model 1

Since I seem to be on a roll with posting class notes, I'd figured I might as well post what I went over in my macroeconomics class. Today, we continued our journey with the Solow Growth Model. Unlike a simple production function, the Solow Growth Model takes into account Capital Accumulation.

To calculate the Solow Model, we require a few equations:

Y= AK^αL^1-α
Y= C + I
K_t+1=K_t + I - dK_t

The first equation refers to the production formula. A certain output Y is equal to A, the technology factor, K, some amount of capital, and L, labor. The production formula follows the basic Cobb Douglas form where we have K, L and some form of alpha. Alpha is less than one.

The second equation basically states that the general output is equal to consumption and investment. What does not get consumed is saved and therefore invested. This formula leads to another formula where I= sY. s stands for a savings rate. We assume in this equation that the savings rate is equal throughout the country.

The last equation is the capital accumulation function. If we simplify the function, it will look something like this:

ΔK = I - dK_t

All the formulas are related to each other. Now, how can we calculate the optimal value for our country?

We utilize all the formulas to create one super amazing formula. In the Solow Model, all economies move to a steady state. The steady state is where the amount of K is optimal. Now several things can actually shift the K, but we'll discuss that later.

To calculate the steady state, we first take the last equation.

ΔK = I - dK_t ----------> 0 = I - dK_t

Now, why do we do that? Basically, the best point is where Investment is equal to depreciation. The idea is similar to Marginal Product or Maximization Problems.

So, after playing with that equation, we get something like this:

I = dK_t ----------> sY=dK_t

Now, let's plug that into the production function!

Transmedia Storytelling Notes Part 3

Part 5: Negative Capability

When applied to storytelling, negative capability is the art of building strategic gaps into a narrative to evoke a delicious sense of 'uncertainty, Mystery, or doubt' in the audience. Simple references to people, places or events external to the current narrative provide hints to the history of the characters and the larger world in which the story takes place. This empowers audiences to fill in the gaps in their own imaginations while leaving them curious to find out more.

Long pg 53

Negative capability ties directly to Ruppel's migratory cues, which I touched on near the end of section 1.3. To recap, migratory cues are "a signal towards another medium – the means through which various narrative paths are marked by an author and located by a user through activation patterns". While negative capability need not actually lead to anything at the moment in which it's written into the story, it clears a space in the narrative for those cues to be planted .

Long 59

Thanks to negative capability and the ‘writerly’ nature of the text, the story continues to function without audience members having experienced either the anime or the video game, as they can imagine their own answer to the question of where exactly that letter came from. They retain the option to go and track it down, and their understanding (and enjoyment) of the story would be increased by their doing so. One possible way to merge these terminologies is to understand any reference to external people, places or events as utilizing negative capability to craft potential migratory cues, and become actualized as migratory cues when those extensions are made available.

Long 60

A storyteller looking to craft a potential transmedia narrative should carefully craft the world in which that story exists, and then make passing references to elements in that world during the course of the narrative to simultaneously spark audience imaginations through negative capability and provide potential openings for future migratory cues.

Long 60

Writerly vs Readerly Text (?)

Part 6: The Hermenetic Codes

Transmedia Storytelling Notes Part 2

I do not like reading such long pages of texts
I do not enjoy the search
I will not take part in this discussion
I will not be a film student's friend
Destroy this topic today! Today! Today!
Today I say!
Without delay!

Part 3: Distinctive vs Valuable Contribution

Summary: There's a difference between transmedia storytelling and transmedia. Brands fall under transmedia. To tell whether something is not part of brand, Long says to evaluate how "well they set themselves apart from transmedia branding through narrative cohesion and canon" (pg 34). Long then looks at Star Wars and its expanded universe. Basically, George Lucas agreed that fans can have fun and create stories. But what he also said is that he doesn't consider them to be a part of his universe. Long then assumes fans will create two Star Wars universes- one Lucas approves of (canon) and one that has everything in it. And because I am lazy ...

This is where a crucial distinction can be made concerning true transmedia
narratives like The Matrix, and can be considered a first step toward establishing an
aesthetics of transmedia storytelling: each component of a transmedia story is
designed as canonical from the outset. While it's still possible to argue for a distinction
between 'primary elements' (the films) and 'secondary elements' (the comics, the video
games, the anime, and everything else) in the franchise, plot points were revealed in the
secondary components that greatly enriched one's understanding of what was happening
in the primary components. Fans that consumed these additional components came away
with a fuller understanding and a better experience of the world as a whole.

Long pg 40

This is a complete contrast from licensing. Licensing is basically taking whatever is original and making it suck.

Migratory Cues:

Referring to the Letter in the Matrix that became central to the game:

Ruppel refers to these intermedial hooks as 'migratory cues', "the means through which various
narrative paths are marked by an author and located by a user through activation patterns

 Long pg 42

Part 4: From Plot to Character to World

Aristotle is arguing that it’s more important to focus on the actions of the players – the what happens, the plot – rather than on the qualities – the personalities and emotions – that distinguish the players onstage into separate characters.

Long 44

That said, a storyteller's priorities begin to shift if the end goal changes from telling one good story to keeping an audience engaged for multiple stories. Audiences enjoy a thrilling plot, but they become more deeply engaged with good, solid characters. Consider the epic adventures of heroes like Hercules: a single solid character can keep audiences coming back for more over and over again.

Long 44

Transmedia narratives, however, are indicative of a new shift in emphasis. The entertainment industry has learned that yes, popular recurring characters can increase repeat revenue, but better still is a rich story world that can host multiple sets of recurring characters, as in Star Trek and Star Wars.

Long 45

When developing a narrative that's meant to extend across multiple media forms, the
world must be considered a primary character of its own, because many transmedia
narratives aren’t the story of one character at all, but the story of a world.

Long 48

This is also not to say that all transmedia narratives need to focus on the world as the primary character; it is easy to imagine a smaller, self-contained transfiction story that begins and ends with one primary character. However, a storyteller charged with creating a story open to eventual transmedia expansion should be aware that while the story he or she is currently writing may focus on one character, a different storyteller might focus on someone completely different, in a completely different era. The trick is to build enough compelling texture, opportunity and character into the larger world to bring audiences back again and again no matter what media form future extensions may take, and to do it gracefully.

Long 50

Worldbuilding is dull. Worldbuilding literalizes the urge to invent.
Worldbuilding gives an unnecessary permission for acts of writing
(indeed, for acts of reading). Worldbuilding numbs the reader’s ability to
fulfill their part of the bargain, because it believes that it has to do
everything around here if anything is going to get done.
Above all, worldbuilding is not technically necessary. It is the great
clomping foot of nerdism. It is the attempt to exhaustively survey a place
that isn’t there. A good writer would never try to do that, even with a place
that is there. It isn’t possible, & if it was the results wouldn’t be readable:
they would constitute not a book but the biggest library ever built, a
hallowed place of dedication & lifelong study. This gives us a clue to the
psychological type of the worldbuilder & the worldbuilder’s victim, &
makes us very afraid.

 M John Harrison