Welcome:

Welcome to BA 123, every business class. I look forward to getting to know all of you this semester as we explore whatever combination of Excel functions and jargon of which this class is a combination. 

My Background:

As a generic McCombs professor, I have had a career which has prepared me to provide you a practical perspective on the business world. At age 15, I went into IB as an analyst at Goldman Sachs, after which I got my MBA from Harvard and became a partner at KKR. After briefly serving as Secretary of the Treasury, I decided to semi-retire and teach the next generation of business leaders here at McCombs. In my spare time I serve on the FOMC and relax on my private island. I also moonlight as Jamie Dimon.

What you’ll learn:

In this class we combine a focus on building quantitative skills which will help you in the workplace with an emphasis on understanding the broader social implications of business, with an eye towards equipping the leaders of tomorrow to create both financial and social profits. By that first thing, I mean that you’d better like Excel (and if you don’t, what are you even doing in McCombs) and that we will also be doing a lot of “data analytics.” We all decided a few years ago that data analytics was the next big thing, and now all of our classes have to have a “big data” connection, whether or not it really makes sense given the broader class theme. 

By that second thing I mean that we still kinda feel bad about the whole Enron thing, and we would appreciate it if you guys, like, didn’t do crimes. Just a suggestion though.

Class schedule:

Here is a schedule of our class lectures and assignments. In every previous semester, for the past ten years of teaching, I have never once actually kept on schedule, yet somehow I am going to be really surprised when we fall behind. With that being said, it’s better than nothing I guess. 

Grading:

Grades in this class are fairly simple. 20% of your grades will be from the midterm, and 30% from the final. The other 50% will be determined by this formula:

Grade = max( (Hw1 * Hw2 + final project ^ attendance score) / (sum(Hw 3: Hw 6) / 4), (Hw1 + attendance score) ^ ( Hw3 – Final Project) + Hw4! + ₀∫^Hw5 (Hw6 d Hw2)) / 2

We will actually have seven homeworks, but I will drop one homework grade at random.

As a reminder, do NOT trust Canvas’ grades, their weighing doesn’t actually work. Even though taking a weighted average should be simple enough for a computer to do, for some reason it cannot. I would recommend making a spreadsheet to calculate your grades.  

This, of course, is not taking into account the curve. Because this is a McCombs curve, the exact curve amount is determined by how well your peers do, so I cannot yet say how high it will be. With that being said, with a few assumptions you should be able to create a statistical model to simulate your chances of getting an A for any given grade distribution G. I would suggest using the Black-Scholes option pricing model, except replace the Stock Price with your estimated grade, and the strike price with the cutoff necessary to get an A, and adjust the other parameters as appropriate. A Monte Carlo simulation may also prove helpful.

Attendance is determined in the following way: you can be absent as many times as you want, with no penalty. I have, however, drawn a number out of a hat, and on the day indicated by that number, I will take attendance. If you are there, you get a 100, else you get a 0. Your expected grade is the same as if I took the percentage of classes you attended as your grade, so really I don’t know what people keep complaining about. 

Class materials:

You can buy the textbook, written by yours truly, for $199 from the co-op. It will either be totally useless or absolutely necessary for the homework. Hopefully you find out which before the first assignment is due. I will post the class slideshows on Canvas, which is the best news yet in this syllabus, and which I’m pretty sure adds, like, 5 points to everyone’s test scores. I will also sporadically post the class recordings, depending on the vibes, but in practice this means I’m going to post the recordings you don’t need and not the ones you do. 

Office Hours:

Office hours are critical to your success in this class, which is why I strive to make them as convenient and easy to attend as possible. I hold my office hours Saturday and Sunday mornings, 6:00-6:15 a.m. I will also have one office hour during the week, but I guarantee it’s gonna be during one of your other classes. Don’t worry, it’s not like you were gonna be able to find my office anyway. If you can somehow make these times, it’s not going to help you, as they don’t actually really work for me and I’m gonna have to move them around most weeks. 

Academic Dishonesty:

The McCombs School of Business takes Academic Dishonesty very seriously. Anyone caught providing or receiving illicit help on an assignment or exam, committing plagiarism, or engaging in the unauthorized distribution of class materials will be summarily executed by firing squad, by order of Dean Lillian Mills.

Title IX reporting, Students with Disability, religious holidays, etc. 

Here is a bunch of boilerplate the University makes me put in. It may seem pointless to put the exact same text, which no one reads, on every syllabus, but it’s just 10 seconds of copy paste on my end, and it’s not like it actually really affects you guys, and, who knows, it’s quite possible someone somewhere didn’t already know this stuff and was helped by having it here, so really including all this stuff on every syllabus is most likely a net positive. Still feels kinda pointless though. 

If you have any questions about the syllabus, please reach out to me at generic.professor@utexas.edu. If you have read this far, include the word “syllabus” in the subject line and receive one free bonus point. You will also spare yourself the embarrassment of being that guy on the first day who asks a question which makes it very obvious he didn’t bother to open the doc in the first place.