Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Wikipedia...sigh

For better or worse, Wikipedia is a go-to site for information.  Often it is quite good.  Sometimes it is not.

I happened to notice over my Wikipedia entry this sentence about the student walkout several years ago:

"Mankiw published his class attendance at the end, and it showed more students showed up to class that day than on average class day, as many counter-protested by coming."

This is false.  In fact, I do not even take attendance in ec 10 lectures.  I know anecdotally that some counter-protestors did come to that class (as I noted in this article, the only thing I published about the walkout), but I have no idea of the numbers, and I did not publish anything like class attendance.

If someone could fix that sentence over at Wikipedia, I would appreciate it.  And while you're there, add some (truthful) stuff about me.  Consider it a Christmas present.