Using PowerPoint to Think and Write
Health Economics
Allen C. GoodmaniHEA World Congress
Milano – July 2015
Student Experience
Students often come to both undergraduate and graduate economics courses with little or no experience in writing economics … Often little experience in any sort of scholarly writing – and they detest outlining anything.
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All of these can be done as PP presentations
• It makes students synopsize what they want to do.• It makes students write it down.• It makes it easy for them to organize … and re-organize …
and re-organize again.• Makes it easy for students to provide intermediate output
– in the consulting vernacular, “deliverables.”
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Tool = PowerPoint
• For outlines, data organization, and at the end of the process, presentation, provides a helpful way for students to
1. start the process, 2. provide early output for instructional review,3. organize data, diagrams, maps, and/or tables,4. “fill in the blanks” as they write,5. and then … present the results
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Simple Example
• Determinants of National Health Expenditures• Easy to do with OECD Health Data
• As simple as Expenditures/person = a + b GDP/person, for a single country
• Can be more complicated (more countries, more variables)
• Can have more complicated econometrics (cointegration analysis).
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1. What should I do? – 5 slides
1. Title (it’s amazing how many are entitled “presentation”).2. Null and alternative hypotheses3. Database4. Variables to use5. One slide list of references (maybe 5)
a. Wikipedia is not a scholarly referenceb. FGS/7 is not a scholarly reference.
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2. Early output - Reading
• Structure the reading• Think of this like a chemistry
or a physics experiment • Aim• Equipment• Procedure• Results• Interpretation
• Here• Economics analogy
• Aim• Approach• Database• Findings• Meaning• What did you like?• What didn’t you like?
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Spreadsheet FormatTitle Journal Aim Approach Database Findings Meaning Like? Dislike?
Many journals accept (PREFER) this as a literature review
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3. Data, Diagrams, Maps, or Tables
Health Expenditures and GDP Per Capita – 1960 - 2008
GDP Expenditures
Mean Median Mean Median
Canada 15778 14489 1516 1259
Italy 13897 12518 2013 1885
UK 14242 11590 1047 689
US 18862 16539 2647 18117/6/2015 9
Summary Regression – UK – Log-Log
SUMMARY OUTPUT - UK
Regression StatisticsMultiple R 0.999099R Square 0.998199Adjusted R Square0.99816Standard Error 0.02122Observations 49
ANOVAdf SS MS F
Regression 1 11.72687 11.72687 26042.66Residual 47 0.021164 0.00045Total 48 11.74803
CoefficientsStandard Error t Stat P-valueIntercept -2.22412 0.030938 -71.8896 1.01E-49GDP 1.246471 0.007724 161.3774 3.73E-667/6/2015 10
Summary Regression – US – Log-LogSUMMARY OUTPUT - US
Regression StatisticsMultiple R 0.999487R Square 0.998975Adjusted R Square0.998953Standard Error 0.017721Observations 49
ANOVAdf SS MS F
Regression 1 14.38352 14.38352 45803.26Residual 47 0.014759 0.000314Total 48 14.39828
CoefficientsStandard Error t Stat P-valueIntercept -2.66021 0.027116 -98.1034 5.01E-56GDP 1.399581 0.00654 214.017 6.55E-727/6/2015 11
4. Write– UK – Log-LogSUMMARY OUTPUT - UK
Regression StatisticsMultiple R 0.999099R Square 0.998199Adjusted R Square0.99816Standard Error 0.02122Observations 49
ANOVAdf SS MS F
Regression 1 11.72687 11.72687 26042.66Residual 47 0.021164 0.00045Total 48 11.74803
CoefficientsStandard Error t Stat P-valueIntercept -2.22412 0.030938 -71.8896 1.01E-49GDP 1.246471 0.007724 161.3774 3.73E-66
R-squared is over 0.99 – pretty good
Elasticity is 1.25
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Write – US – Log-LogSUMMARY OUTPUT - US
Regression StatisticsMultiple R 0.999487R Square 0.998975Adjusted R Square0.998953Standard Error 0.017721Observations 49
ANOVAdf SS MS F
Regression 1 14.38352 14.38352 45803.26Residual 47 0.014759 0.000314Total 48 14.39828
CoefficientsStandard Error t Stat P-valueIntercept -2.66021 0.027116 -98.1034 5.01E-56GDP 1.399581 0.00654 214.017 6.55E-72
R-squared is over 0.99 – pretty good
Elasticity is 1.40
US elasticity > UK elasticity
Graph?
Put in same table?
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5. Finish the paper
• Do I need more analyses? – Put them in the right place.• Do I have to read something else – Put that in the right
place.• Am I much more organized? We hope so.• If you are writing in MS Word, you can just cut and paste
the tables, graphs, references.
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Arrière Pensées
• This is obviously an undergraduate example. It can also work at the graduate level, often topic by topic or chapter by chapter.
• Graduate students (and advisers) are often frustrated by lack of progress or talking past each other.
• Often when a student will come in with an idea, I’ll say, “write me a 10 slide PowerPoint.”
• They have to organize• They have to figure out what is important• They have to figure out how to present the key ideas rather than simply
writing them down.
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Autres Arrière Pensées
• On occasion, I’ve dispensed with the paper entirely, and asked for a complete set of PP slides.
• This depends on the motives for the research. It won’t work if you view it as important to concentrate on grammar.
• Insist that students avoid MASSIVE “cut and pastes”. This is equivalent to stringing along paragraph-long quotes in a paper … and just as bad.
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So …
• Rather than being the last thing that students do, PowerPoint can help from the start.
• Outline• Organize• Rearrange• Summarize• … and finally• Present
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