Editorial Policy

(For statistical material go to our References section!)

In this blog, CrisisMaven tries to reflect the past and possible future developments in the global economy as well as history at large. As described in the About page, comments are welcome as long as they adhere to some basic tenets of civility and are referring to the subject in question.

Study Guide Format

As far as time allows, all articles here will be very heavily annotated in the form of embedded hyperlinks that lead to some deeper understanding of the hyperlinked topic in question.

However, the hyperlinks provided need not necessarily lead to references whose author’s opinions coincide with CrisisMaven’s. Rather, each hyperlink reference will be chosen for its giving an interesting or elucidating insight into the term thus referenced, the rationale being that what drives this crisis is also a lack of general education both in history, in sound economics as well as in logical rigour. While many may not be good mathematicians, what has brought this crisis about was that most economists who applied mathematics to their models were not aware of their shortcomings in the field, Nobel Memorial Prizes or not. As with psychology, the widespread use of “mathematics” in the social sciences is fraught with errors such as applying averages to ordinals by treating them as cardinal numbers and by using statistics on variables that are not independent of each other as probability theory in most such cases demands as an ingoing proposition. Had that not happened, then no one would have been taken by surprise with scenarios that were “25 standard deviations out of whack” and other such nonsense.

Annotations, Quotations and Referencing Policy

Having said that, all inline hyperlinked references are not “scientific annotations” in the ordinary sense but are given as “food for thought” and should normally satisfy at least one of the following criteria:

• They either elucidate or corroborate a point being made in the post where citation occurs,
• or the reference is to an opinion that is opposed to the author’s or at least views things from rather a different angle, but which CrisisMaven feels should be considered,
• and it is always the shortest and most direct way CrisisMaven will use to give credit to sources he has found useful or that he sees as useful to the general reader.

Often all three criteria may coincide.

Reports of broken links in comments of the respective article are greatly appreciated as well as suggestions of suitable additional links.

The real scientific references from the author’s point of view are always those which are expressly quoted in the text of the posted article, be they textual block quotes or graphical illustrations.

NOTE 1: When you hover (mouse-over) over a particular link WORDPRESS will generally show a preview of the page the link points to. Should you have disabled it and want to turn the mshot preview on again, follow this advice.

NOTE 2: You will often find that those hyperlinks mentioned become fewer as you read on in any particular post. In most cases that is not for lack of references but due to the fact that inserting hyperlinked references is quite a tedious job compared to just writing things down so I may often decide to first publish an article the contents of which I deem complete and then over the course of days, weeks and maybe sometimes even months I will add more and more hyperlinks to the existing articles. So if you’re interested in that secondary information or are interested in the “study guide feature” revisit older posts sporadically and follow the newly added links.

Credit: Often when referring to a term of general knowledge I place a hyperlink to Wikipedia. That is not a general endorsement as to the quality of each and every article cited, in fact there are constant disputes, however, you probably agree with me that it is one of the most accessible and generally best worded sources of information plus as a rule it gives you further external references should you want to investigate a subject further. Should you appreciate what Wikipedia is doing, then consider donating or becoming an author or even administrator. Also check out these related sources like Wikibooks, Wikiversity or WikiSource.

CrisisMaven also wants to thank everyone to whose material this blog links to, for all the material cited or referenced and thanks all those who link back, use trackback or otherwise make this blog known to others.

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