an analysis involving assumptions

(4/08/2008 10:48:00 PM)

I would first like to point out that the quote by me is not perfect, although my meaning is adequately conveyed by the substitute presented. I would next like to point out that my internet window crashed on me after I had typed two paragraphs, thus worsening my already rather bad mood and thus the following entry might not be as long/comprehensive/amusing/wonderful as it can be. In addition to that, I am not sure how my post will be construed, especially since my brain has initiated shut-down processes (in part due to my 1 hour of multiple purpose mugging time was spent looking at you-know-what).

Anyway, after giving the matter some thought, I realized that we have, in general, made a rather fundamental assumption regarding how the overall quality of a presentation is judged. Here, I will assume that a presentation is good if it satisfies its target audience, and that the target audience will be satisfied if the presentation provides information, entertainment, or both. As the introduction of multiple variables will complicate the whole matter, let us simplify things by assuming that a presentation is a good one if the audience's happiness level increases at the end of the presentation.

The crux of the whole matter, I feel, are the words 'target audience'.

The assumption we all made was to define 'target audience' by the entire population in the LT. So, the presenters figured, given our own limited intelligence, we may not be able to provide information of the groundbreaking variety to everyone. However, in the belief that everyone woud be suitably entertained by some attempts at humour, especially if they were successful, the said presenters dutifully did so.

What we did not consider, however, was that 'target audience' is not *necessarily* the whole LT population to everyone. A possibility is to consider the set of people interested in the presentation, {interested people}={presenters}. With this assumption, it naturally follows that it makes a lot of sense to indulge in the enjoyment of equation after equation after equation, since {set of people who do not understand}={set of uninterested people}=null set.

This author, in the interests of upholding reasonably good inter-class relations, will not impose a definite value judgement, but will instead leave it to the rest of the class/whoever is interested to come to his/her own conclusion. Instead, this author will turn to some speculation as to how the definitional discrepany might have arised.

Borrowing from some economics concepts, it is possible to treat our class/its works as a product, which price can be affected by the prices of other products (ie the quality of other classes). From what we have learnt about cross elasticity of demand, when close substitutes slash price, we all will have to follow suit (ie produce more work in the same amount of time, etc etc).

Being rather econs savvy people who *listen* in lessons, we also learnt that we should try to decrease the ced value so that we won't be good substutes for other classes.

In an attempt to do so, therefore, 6h started subscribing to a set of values that a certain substitute would never follow, including (but not limited to) what I would call hippie-ness, characterised by an (overall) strong bond within the class (which incidentally probably explains why we don't have strong bonds with other classes), a strange liking for weird movements and general insanity throughout.

According to a theory that I haven't heard about, our values influence our assumptions and this therefore explains 6h's unique set of assumptions.

Evidence: If I hadn't been influenced by this set of values, why on *earth* am I blogging when I still have a ton of work to do?

Since I brought in hippies, I should end with a hippie-ish statement.

Peace! Why waste our time with such stuff?