I got back from Austin late on Sunday afternoon and I was happy to be home. That is not to say that the conference in Austin was not good…only that I was happy to be in my own house.
AMATYC’s annual conference is always excellent. Like most escort kızlar of you, I go to steal ideas from others. If I can find five new things to try, the conference is a success for me. I am still sorting through the multitude of websites that were distributed at the conference and I’ll post the best ones later. I gave a presentation on “A Different Strategy for Solving Optimization Problems in Calculus” that you can view online. In the next few weeks, you’ll be able to see many of the resources referenced at the conference at the Proceedings page of AMATYC’s website.
There is one curious thing that most attendees notice when attending the exhibit hall. Between sessions, everyone generally cruises the hall for the various goodies exhibitors like McGraw-Hill, Cengage, Pearson, and Hawkes Systems set out. When you don’t have time to grab a quick bite, popcorn is often the key to conference survival!
At the last few conferences, the Hawkes booth has stood out from all of the rest. It is not necessarily the product, but the people who sell the product. The representatives from Hawkes are generally young, attractive women (there was also a young, attractive man this year!). This begs the queastion, “Is staffing a conference booth with young, attractive people a good strategy?”
Questions like these have recently been the subject of several books:
- Erotic Capital: The Power of Attraction in the Boardroom and the Bedroom, Catherine Hakim, Basic Books, 2011
- Beauty Pays: Why Attractive People are More Successful, Daniel S. Hamermesh, Princeton University Press, 2011
The author of the second book, Daniel Hamermesh, is an economist at of all places…the University of Texas at Austin. Although I have not read his book yet, he has a paper on the subject that is publically available, “Beauty is the Promise of Happiness”? There is a lot of good statistics in this paper for all of you stat junkies. The book has also been reviewed by several magazines.
This book has even generated an appearance last night on the Daily Show.
Warning: Some bad taste in the clip below.
The author also answered questions from readers of the Freakonomics website recently.
Hamermesh has even examined the effect of beauty in the classsroom.
This makes for fascinating reading…next time you visit the Hawkes booth at a conference, ask them how they are doing.
Now that the semester is winding down, you are probably evaluating what worked and what did not work in your classes. You must have found something that you would like to share next year at the AMATYC conference in Jacksonville.
It has been a month since the annual conference in Austin and presenters have had a chance to get their handouts, videos, and other documents to the AMATYC webmaster. You can view those items via the link below: