The Great PPE Prelims Revision List of Doom 2006 [forward-dated to June 19th]

[raven]

Oh, so doomed. Never mind. This list is obviously only for my benefit, and that benefit is inserting strike tags as each topic gets done. Allow me my small pleasures.

Politics

Political Theory
-Rousseau, The Social Contract
-Mill, On Liberty
-concepts of freedom
-Marxism

French Politics
-failings of the Fourth Republic
-cohabitation of PM and President
-party system since 1981

British Politics
-executives
-legislatures
-parties

Economics

Microeconomics
-Perfect competition and monopoly
-Externalities

Macroeconomics
-IS-LM model, derivation thereof
-Mundell-Fleming (IS-LM-BP) model of open economy
-Phillips' curve; inflation and unemployment
-Consumption and income

Mathematics
-powers, indices, logs, natural logs, exponentials, etc., etc., things I do not know even though I am nineteen years old and approximately a decade too old to be learning
-maths of finance
-differentiation
-maths of constrained optimisation
-Lagrange multipliers

Philosophy

Mill's Utilitarianism
-Pleasure and pain (and Bentham)
-act- and rule-utilitarianism
-rights and justice
-Mill's "proof"

General Philosophy
-induction
-grue
-Cartesian dualism
-personal identity

But I am very, very calm and surprisingly cheerful about it all. I'm getting lots of work done at present; hopefully the trend will continue.

Edited to add: Bits:

zero capital mobility
details on cohabitation public policy
lecture notes on pleasure
Hume's argument!
French revision class notes
articles of the constitution

Comments

[me-ves-y-sufres.livejournal.com]

Oh, you poor thing- Mill's Utilitarianism? Ouch, ouch, ouch. I couldn't even get through a copy of that for fun, let alone study. The sentences just don't seem to stop.

Mathamatics sounds delightfully poetic as long as I don't have to know about how it works.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

It's eight months since I did it and still I have the scars. *g* You wouldn't think he was the same person as the author of On Liberty.

Ah, yes, the poetry of mathematics. Or the ear-bleeding pain, s'all the same really.

[ceciley.livejournal.com]

Maybe I should write myself one of these. Hm.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

They are a Good Plan, yes. *nodnod*

[robette-wild.livejournal.com]

Eeek. I am in awe of your PPEist abilities! Well done on ploughing through so far, though, 'specially since you've been ill, and lots of good luck wishes for 9th week :D

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you, my dear. *loves*

[tau_sigma]

powers, indices, logs, natural logs, exponentials, etc., etc., things I do not know even though I am nineteen years old and approximately a decade too old to be learning.

Hah. Firstly, I know people who had interviews for Physics degrees and couldn't draw a graph of e^x. Now, that's fine if you haven't done maths past GCSE, but people wanting to do a degree in Physics? Um! Secondly, in my Algebra exam (and I am wanting to do half a degree in maths!) I considered such gems as '8 x 3 = 12' and '3 x 7 = 28', and had a hard time noticing they were wrong! I'm not sure what this is supposed to prove, except possibly to amuse you with my stupidity. *g*

Glad it's going well at the moment, anyway; hope it continues.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Graph of e^x? *thinky face* Is that the one with the soon-to-be-dramatically-vertical curve? I don't know that. I should know that. Ohgod. (Also, it took me a full minute to notice 8 x 3 =/= 12. Ah, arithmetic, how I adore thee.)

I'd give years of my life to be a good mathematician. I was just thinking today that I envy scientists like yourself - because what you do is actually difficult: what you do, you need proper talent to do. What I do is a question of reading the right books! :)

[tau_sigma]

*stares*

... I'm just kind of wondering how to respond to that. Because to me, what you do is difficult and requires talent! I could pretty much turn it around; Maths, after all, is pretty logical and requires learning and instinctualisation of rules and theorems and building up from basic known facts. Whereas arts require the intellectual leap to understanding what you read and relating it to other thoughts on the subject, and forming your own opinions, and expressing them well, and all those things which I really couldn't do. I think neither is harder or requires more talent, really; they are just very different.

Anyway... e^x is indeed kind of like that. Worry not! There are many things we all should know and don't, and you will be fine. You know lots of stuff. *g* On that note, I shall go to bed and stop tiredly waffling. (Oh help, 2 hour lecture, 3 hours orchestra, recorders and a different orchestra rehearsal tomorrow. ARGH. I should have gone to bed earlier...)

[tau_sigma]

*stares*

... I'm just kind of wondering how to respond to that. Because to me, what you do is difficult and requires talent! I could pretty much turn it around; Maths, after all, is pretty logical and requires learning and instinctualisation of rules and theorems and building up from basic known facts. Whereas arts require the intellectual leap to understanding what you read and relating it to other thoughts on the subject, and forming your own opinions, and expressing them well, and all those things which I really couldn't do. I think neither is harder or requires more talent, really; they are just very different.

Anyway... e^x is indeed like that. Arithmatic is silly, and maths lecturers are sadists. Bonne nuit.

[the-acrobat.livejournal.com]

Good luck! I know you can do it!!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you! *g*

[orientalflower.livejournal.com]

Wow. Blast from the past! Good luck, babe.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Heee, thanks!

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Doom indeed.

Good luck

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you! (Dare I ask how James is taking it?)

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

Now that's something I haven't figured out yet. On the one hand he's a near-genius with latent superpowers, but on the other hand he's a severely fucked up kid living in an alternate Oxford in which his aunt was ripped to bits by a rogue demon and his boyfriend regularly fights supernatural crimes, because no one else is insane enough to do it.

So he's probably trying to convince himself how normal he is by panicking along with everyone else. And plotting how to secretly grow hash on a window sill when he moves in with Richard (who has, of course done seen it all before).

Meanwhile I'm still writing the apocryphal scene where Richard takes James to the new house for the first time.

[cedara]

Oi. Good luck and lots of chooclate.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much.

[pinkishmew.livejournal.com]

This reminds me, I read in the National Student Newspaper (that may or may not be its real name - I cannot quite recall) that a second year Oxford PPE-ist was working part time as a rent boy. It seemed so typically Oxfordian, and I was very amused.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

HEEE. That surprises me not at all.

[amchau.livejournal.com]

I see that all of Political Theory is crossed off already. Well done!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

Thank you! *g*

[amchau.livejournal.com]

And mircoeconomics. You're doing well; keep going!

[thehairyfairy.livejournal.com]

stop avoiding the maths!

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

GO AWAY.

[ynive.livejournal.com]

GOD, I was just wondering around and I realized we were born in same day, well I was born an year later but you are the first person.. kheehe that is so weird or fun or something.

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

You should meet broncobabe007. *g*

[gamesiplay.livejournal.com]

You're doing fabulously. Keep it up!