Now we are going to address a very important question from the point of view of the option here, how to maximize the revenue. So far we have only discussed about the truthfulness, but now we not only want to reveal the information truthfully, but we also want to maximize the payment that has been made by all these agents. Now, when we are talking about the revenue optimality, and that is what we mean by optimal options, we have to assume some sort of a prior over the types or the valuations of the agents. And why is that, if we try to do a non-prior, try to maximize the revenue from a non-prior setting, we will have to consider something like a worst case revenue. And the worst case revenue might not be that good, it can be very, very less compared to what is possible to earn in practice. And the reason being that when you are selling an object, when the auctioneer is selling an object, it might also have some information about the valuations of the buyers from their previous interactions. If there is an object which is being sold over time, or similar kind of objects being sold in an auction over time, then it has some sort of a prior that what the valuation distribution is. And accordingly, we can define the expected revenue that you can earn from this mechanism. And that is the reason we will now shift to the Bayesian setting, and we will redefine these notions of incentive compatibility and individual rationality in the Bayesian setting. So Bayesian incentive compatibility, we have already discussed very early in this mechanism design segment. So it says that if we, so now we are going to define BIC in the context of single object allocation. Now assuming that the type set are intervals between 0 and BI for agent I, and the common prior is defined on top of that type profile. So it's a Cartesian product over all the types of all these agents. And let us assume that this lower case G denotes the density of that common prior distribution which is a CDF. Now with this notation G minus I, S minus I given S I, we are going to define, we are going to denote the conditional distribution over S minus I, the types of the type vector of the all other agents given agent I's type which is S I. So what we are assuming that agent I knows its own type, this is something like an interim state where it knows its own type, but it does not know the types of the others. It only can predict or have a belief over that which is probabilistic. Similarly, lower case G minus I is just the density. And all these things S minus I given S I, this is derived from the original G using the Bayes rule as before. Now what we are going to say is that every mechanism, so the mechanism is again mapping on the type profile into an allocation which could be a probabilistic allocation. And this payments, the actual payments that has been made after the realization of the types, this induces an expected allocation. So when the agent I does not know the types of the other players, it can only predict what will be the allocation in an expected way and we will define that shortly. So it can define the expected allocation and the expected payment according to those common prior capital G and its density is lower case G. And those payment, this expected allocation and expected payment rule, we are going to define by this alpha and pi, the vector pi. So what is this alpha? So alpha again has components for each of these players. So this is the ith component of that allocation. But now notice that it is no longer a function of S minus I because we are going to take the expectation with respect to S minus I and therefore it is only function of two things, what its true type is and what is its reported type is. So now it is going to be defined in the following way. So look at this part which was there in the previous setup also when we were talking about this randomized allocation. But the randomized allocation was in the prior free setting. So it was defined for the entire type profiling when SI, so agent I sees its type which is SI and the type of the other players is S minus I. This was the probability of allocation of that agent, of that object to that agent. Now on top of that what we are going to do because agent I does not deterministically know what S minus I is, it is expecting that with respect to that belief which is S minus I given TI. So TI is its true type. So the belief will depend only on the true type while it might report something different. So based on its report the mechanism will work but it will always evaluate that mechanism according to its true type and that is why there is this difference. So notice that this one is the same one which it has reported and this one, this type is the same one that is its true type. And at this point we are also, I would like to make one comment that we have seen deterministic mechanisms where the allocation is exactly giving the object deterministically to one agent or to some other agent. We have seen in the previous setup in the module on Myersons mechanism that you can also give randomized allocations. Now that is after everybody has reported, so this randomization is happening on the side of the mechanism designer. So mechanism designer may toss a coin or do some randomization and give the object probabilistically to one of these agents. So this is one level of randomization that happens at the mechanism designer level. But the probability or the prior based thing, so this randomization is actually happening at the agent's place. So the agent is creating its belief or has a belief based on their g-i, the common prior and it is taking the expectation with respect to that belief. So that is another randomization how this s-i's are getting generated in agent i's own mind. And we are taking the product of these two different probabilities and then taking the expectation over this s-i's. So this is what I wanted to keep in mind because whenever we are talking about the single object allocation, particularly when we are talking about Bayesian incentive compatibility or some guarantees in the Bayesian world and also our mechanism is also randomized. Then we have these two levels of expectation. The first expectation is coming from the agent side, which is the belief over the types of the other players. And the second level of randomization is coming from the mechanism designer side, how it is allocating the object to the different players. So something to keep in mind. So similarly we can define what is the expected payment for this player i. Again s-i is the reported type and t-i is the true type. As before we are going to take the expectation with respect to this posterior distribution. So you can call this a posterior given its own type. It is generating the belief over the types of the other agents, taking the expectation with respect to the actual payment which is given by the mechanism. Because it is reporting s-i, the mechanism will decide the payment according to that. And assuming that the other players are reporting s-i in truthful manner. So here the probability can only be defined in terms of the true valuation profile, not what they do if they misreport. So if that happens then this is the expected payment for player i. And therefore the expected utility will be just that you are, so when agent i is reporting this type truthfully let us say, so s-i is actually equal to t-i. In that setting you can write it as t-i multiplied by that expected probability of this allocation minus the expected payment. So this is sort of the interim utility that this agent i is getting. Now we are in the right position to define what is valuation incentive compatibility. As before the inequality that when it is reporting its type truthfully the expected payoff or expected utility that they are getting is at least as much as when it is misreporting to some s-i. And this inequality should get satisfied for all s-i and t-i in capital T-i. Note that there is no s-i anymore because that has already been taken expectation over. And as before we are going to say that this allocation rule is Bayesian implementable.  Of course implicitly we are assuming that there exists a common prior g and we are taking the expectation of this allocations and the payments according to that g. So in this setup we are going to assume the independence of all these priors of this the distribution over these types. And also then we are going to do the characterization of b-i-c mechanisms very similar to what we have done for the d-s-i-c mechanisms and we will see a very similar result which is also a result due to Meyerson but now for the b-i-c mechanisms. So what we are going to assume is that this the joint distribution of all the types of the agents is decomposable in a product form and therefore I mean this is essentially just saying that all these types are generated independently from each other. Now we are going to use for simplicity whenever agent i is reporting its type truthfully. So this ti is the same as the type that is its true type that alpha of ti is the shorthand for that notation instead of writing it twice. So now an allocation rule is going to be non-decreasing in the expectation. So remember that the earlier we were saying it is non-decreasing and we were just using the fact that fi of ti t-i is at least as much of fi of si t-i and whenever ti is greater than si. So we define this as non-decreasingness. Now we are going to apply the expectation with respect to the prior and we are going to define that it is going to be non-decreasing in expectation if for every si which is strictly less than ti instead of fi now the expected allocation is non-decreasing. So that is a non-decreasing in expectation quite straightforward definition. We will note that this rules that are non-decreasing that we have defined in the previous case so all those rules so all the characterization results that we did and all the examples that we have given earlier which were non-decreasing they are always non-decreasing in expectation because they are non-decreasing for every ti-i so of course if you take expectation with respect to that they are also going to be following the non-decreasingness in expectation but now what can happen is we can possibly have more rules and we will see examples of that more rules that are non-decreasing in expectation and that opens up a lot of many other mechanisms which on which we can actually try to maximize our revenue. So let us first discuss the characterization result the result which is very similar to the Myerson's characterization of DSIC mechanism so here we are trying to do the characterization of the BIC mechanisms so you are going to say that this mechanism the result goes as follows this mechanism f comma p in the independent prior setting so that is what we are looking at is BIC if and only if two conditions hold and those conditions are very much analogous to the DSIC condition f is non-decreasing in expectation now and also this payment formula satisfies this integral formula which is very similar so you are the expected payment at type ti again notice that there is no t minus i anymore because they have all been expected over the expected payment is has three components first one is the constant component the second one is alpha ti times alpha of ti so you see f or fi has all been replaced with alpha i ti and similarly for the last component which is the integral part and this should hold for all ti in capital ti so this is this is the as you can see is a Bayesian version of the earlier theorem but the proof can follow in very similar line so we are not going to get into that proof you can use the ideas of the same proof and just have to take the expectation at appropriate places and redo the proof I leave that as an exercise now since we said that there are more NDE rules than the NDE rules so let us look at one example where it is NDE but not NDE so let us assume that there are two players and each of them have five possible types their typeset has five possibilities and they can be represented in the form of a matrix so the five different types for player one is given here and the five possible types are given here so each of this blocks are actually representing each type profile and now we can so this matrix is showing that under which conditions player one is getting allocated so they are represented with one the the slots that are blank that the agent two is getting allocated the object now how can we see that whether alpha one T one so let us look at alpha one T one the expected allocation for player one under this T one you can see when T one is having this value then the object is getting allocated to player two under all possible circumstances so if you are actually looking at the corresponding allocation with probability one it is going to play at two and with probability zero it is going to go to player one so therefore this expected allocation you can do this calculation the expected allocation for player one when T one is equal to this this value here is going to be zero similarly it is zero here as well but here it has a probability of one over five because there are five possibilities in in one of those cases it is getting an allocation in other four cases it is getting allocated to T two so if you take the expectation over that it will be one by five similarly if the T one is this then it is two by five and at this value it is three by five so you can see that as T one is increasing because T one is increasing in this direction the alpha one T one is also monotonically non decreasing similarly you can look at the alpha two T two so because here and now you will have to look at count the number of blank boxes because we are considering alpha two that is allocation probability of player two so this will be three by five in this case it increases then it goes to three by five again here it is four by five because there are now four blank boxes here also it is four by five and finally it is one because it is getting allocated to player two all together so for both these players they are monotone but you can already begin to see that it is not monotone for F one T one T two or F two T one T two so you can see that if T two was having this particular value here then the allocation so if we fix T two at this point then player one is not getting the allocation here then it is getting the allocation here but again not getting the allocation here so this violates the monotonicity condition so you can also create an example for T two where it is violating that but the point is that this is this allocation rule is not non decreasing so in the Bayesian setting we can also define the analog of the individual rationality property so we are going to say that a mechanism is in the interim individually rational so this is something that happens after agent I has observed its own type but it is still speculating what is the type of the other player so the expected utility or expected payoff of this agent is always going to be non-negative at that intering level for all types of this player so if it is deciding whether to participate after watching its own type it should always participate because that is that is the sort of belief system is telling it okay so now we can actually extend the result of that Myerson characterization for BIC mechanisms to BIC and IIR mechanism so you can see that the mechanism F comma P is BIC and IIR if and only if the first two conditions are coming directly from the characterization of BIC and the third condition is telling you that if the constant part in this integral should be non positive this is something that we have also seen in the individual rationality condition when we discuss the prior phrase setting so here the this constant is going to be non positive so we will not go again to prove this very formally but we can give the pointers that this conditions one and two that we have said is coming directly from the BIC mechanism so this is an if and only if condition so they are equivalent to BIC so all that we need to prove is to show that IIR along with this conditions one and two are equivalent to three and that is not very difficult so in the forward direction so we want to show that IIR along with one and two are equivalent to three so we first show that if we assume IIR with one and two this implies three so how can we do that we just need to apply the the condition of IIR so what is IIR so this this one and we are going to plug the value of TI to be equal to zero so therefore this term this term here vanishes and all that we have is minus pi i is zero is going to be non negative which means this pi i is zero should be non positive that is very straightforward we did the similar exercise in the previous case now the other direction that if if we assume condition three that is if we assume this is true and also this one and two this inequality is true so then whether we should have a condition of IIR so how can we do that we can just write the the utility of player i and if we if we now substitute the value of pi i according to that integral formula what we what is left so because this term will get cancelled out what we will be left with is minus of pi i is zero and this integral part and we know that this is a probability distribution so therefore it is going to be non negative the integral will be non negative and pi i we already know that this is non positive so minus of that will be non negative as well and that will be greater than equal to zero so this is certainly an IIR so all right so we have actually proved this am I as well so we will use this results appropriately when we are trying to find the optimal mechanism which maximizes the revenue


Hi, I'm Luis Robles, goalkeeper for the New York Red Bulls and spokesperson for Hackensight Reading and Health. Join me and my friends, Jack and Diego, in our new series, Play It Forward, premiering September 10th. We are going to do something about this. We're not gonna let it change what our son can do. She said, you know, did you notice all the seizures last night? They said he was having one a minute. I want to invite you out to train with us at the Red Bull Training Facility, and then we're gonna take you to a game.


Thank you. Good morning. I want to, before I begin, I want to take a picture of the most important people here. Smile. Okay. President Sullivan, trustees, Board Chair David Daigle, Governor Peter Schumlund, Senator Patrick Leahy, members of the faculty, proud parents, and above all, lucky graduates of this great university, my alma mater. Thank you. Are you ready to go out and change the world? More power to you. But can you put it off for just about another 20 minutes or so? Because I have a few things I want to tell you, and you pretty much have to listen to me because I could be older than your grandmother. Thank you for the honor of this platform to offer some parting words about what really matters out there in that world you are about to disrupt. I hate to say it, but you've already made one mistake. You've stuck it out for four years here instead of dropping out of college after a year or two to learn computer science and coding and have fun in all-night hackathons where you build cool apps like FaceSwap Live. What were you thinking? I mean, you could have already started a tech company and taken it public. Instead, you had chosen to spend four years stretching your minds in another direction, not just packing them with information, but discovering new ways of thinking. And you've given yourself time to have an identity crisis and find new ways of being in the world. What a waste. Well, lately, we're all hearing a rallying cry in the presidential primaries to go back to old ways of being, to make America great again, like the good old days in the mid-50s when I was in college and America was really great. Back then, men wore the pants. Women had to wear skirts. And it was cold at UVM in the 50s. I mean, really cold for most of the year. But women could never wear pants, not even to walk the half mile from the freshman campus to an 8 AM class, unless the temperature was below 10 degrees below zero. Who would even make a rule like that? Well, someone who could wear pants any damn time he pleased. So we developed blue knees. I still have them. And if we had dared to speak up, we might have chained ourselves across the entrance to Billings and chanted, we want pants. But in the 50s, protests weren't allowed and certainly not to disrupt the skirt as quo. In my graduating class, we had only one African-American student. His name was Bill Pickens. And he was tall, handsome, brilliant. He was elected the first African-American president of the Boulder Society, the first African-American president of a fraternity, and the first African-American president of the entire student body. Bill was all we needed, or so the powers that be thought then. But some good things about the old good old days weren't great for a lot of people. Today, the number of undergraduate and graduate students of color at UVM is 374. That's 374 times more students of color here since I was here. And when I was your age, I wanted to study English. I wanted to be a writer. Well, my father was an advertising guy from the Mad Men era, sort of like Don Draper might have been before he met Peggy Olson. And my dad was prepared to pay my tuition to a state university, but only if I majored in something that gave me a backup skill. You know, in case I didn't meet a husband right away. Well, I said to him, but I want to be a writer. Gail, a BA in English isn't going to earn you car fare if you can even get a job. Why don't you study something practical? Well, my dad told me the university of Vermont had a very fine home economics department. You want me to get an MRS degree? Why did you spend all those years editing my copycat Nancy Drew mystery stories? My father was adamant, and I was resigned until I found out that home economics at the UVM was the closest thing to a business degree. So while my father thought I was learning how to make cherries flambé, I was actually taking courses in economics, public speaking, design, even advertising. And fortunately, in those days, as now, UVM encouraged students to find our own niches. And so I decided to take a double major, English, and the one I never told my friends about, Homed. Well, I graduated, and I got a good start on a career. And I managed to hold off marriage until I was all of 23. That was a big deal in those days. And when I said I do with a medical student, he got the advanced degree while I earned my PhD. That was the degree that wives used to get for putting hubby through. And so I had my first child at 25, and I had a great job writing new journalism for the most innovative magazine of the 60s and 70s, New York Magazine. And I really thought I had the world on a string until I lost control of the yo-yo. Seven years after graduation, I stumbled into failure. My marriage imploded. I was suddenly a single parent. I had to give up my dream job to stay home with my toddler and also earn a living.  But what I didn't realize back then is that failure has its benefits. Failure can be an essential experience of our trying 20s. It teaches us resilience. Failure set me free because my greatest fear had been realized, and I didn't die from it. I still had a daughter whom I adored. I still had a typewriter, and I still loved writing. So I sat down and wrote my first book, a novel. It failed. Now, two seconds ago, I told you that failure was freeing. That's your first failure.  I was overwhelmed with doubt. Had I chosen an impossible dream, but instead of giving into my fears, I embraced my new expertise at being a failure, and I spent all my frequent failure miles on another dream. I dared to apply for a fellowship to Columbia University to study under the professor of my choice. This time, the answer was yes. I chose the anthropologist, Margaret Mead. If I had consulted my father, he surely would have said, oh, no, you're not choosing the humanities again. What can you do with a degree in anthropology? But it was when I came under Mead's tutelage that my intellectual life began to finally take shape. Margaret Mead was the new American cultural prophet. She encouraged me to be a cultural interpreter. She used to say, whenever you hear about a great cultural phenomenon, Gale, a revolution, an assassination, a notorious trial, an attack on the country, drop everything. Get on a bus or a train or a plane. Go there. Stand at the edge of the abyss and look down into it. And you will see a culture turned inside out and revealed in a raw state. Well, I took her advice and ran with it. And one night, in 1968, after I put my daughter to bed, the famous editor of New York magazine, Clay Thelker, barges into my apartment. Gale, what do you know about politics? Well, my mother's a natural born bomb-throwing Irish rebel, and my father's a country club Republican. So I know about politics. It's about fighting at the dinner table. Great, then you'll understand Bobby. Bobby who? Bobby Kennedy. I want you to go out and follow his presidential campaign in Oregon and California. I've never written a political story. Gale, he's running against Gene McCarthy in the Democratic primaries. It's the best story. This is the time to start. You have to leave in two days. But I can't afford a babysitter. I mean, Gale, the way to make your name as a journalist is not to do a lot of little stories. No matter how good they are, they won't start a new conversation. You have to tackle a big story, something that everyone's talking about, but they don't know the why. Well, I thought about my mentor, Margaret Mee's words, get on a bus or a train or a plane, go there. So I asked my sister, Patricia, to stay with my child. I swallowed my fear, and I took the dare. Being the only woman journalist on the bus with nationally known reporters is exhilarating, also intimidating. So I spend most of my energy on pretending I'm not scared. One day on the campaign, the senator is taking a yo-yo trip up and down the Cascade Mountains of Oregon in a tiny plane through rain squalls. Well, I'm not crazy about flying in this kind of condition, but none of the senior correspondents want to go. So this is my big chance to show how not scared I am. And maybe I'll get a story that nobody else would. Well, in one rural town after another, Kennedy faces a hostile crowd of gun-toting residents. I mean, men with, I swear, dead possums or raccoons slung over their shoulders. Some shout at threats on his life. Kennedy pretends not to hear. He climbs the steps of the courthouse and in full, unprotected view, tries to engage the crowd in a friendly discussion of limiting the spread of guns. You can imagine how popular that was with this audience. This is courage. Back on the plane, the seat beside the senator is empty. All of a sudden I hear, would you like to sit up here in New York? New York, that's me. So I sit beside the senator. He asks an aide to hand him JFK's overcoat. It's a poignant moment. Five years after the president's assassination and Bobby is still wearing his older brother's clothes. We talk about this in my interview. And as we approach Portland, a hard rain smears the windows. We can't see that another plane is headed straight at us.  Men scream, my stomach flips over. I'm sure we're all about to die. But while we're still dropping, Bobby Kennedy quips, I knew Gene McCarthy was desperate. I didn't know he was that desperate. Well, his joke gave me an insight about Bobby Kennedy's truth. He has seen so much death in his family. He is a fatalist. He knows he's a target, but he keeps right on talking about limiting the spread of guns. Two nights later, Senator Kennedy's own life is ended at the point of a gun. If I hadn't taken that risky trip, I wouldn't have had that insight about Senator Kennedy. And with my education and the humanities, I knew what I could do with that insight.  I could explore the character of the candidates. That was the epiphany. Issues are today. Character is what was yesterday and will be again tomorrow. So from then on, this became my model. When I fear, I dare. I wanna thank professors in Banco and gentlemen for proposing me as the commencement speaker. They had a motive. Together, they've revived the community's, the Humanities Center where UVM's faculty and students are rediscovering the relevance of the humanities and fine arts. But they often have pushback from dubious parents who ask, if my Skylar studied anthropology, what could he do with it? Well, Luis Van Banco has the perfect answer. What couldn't he do with it? Anthropology teaches us how to think, especially about culture. And wasn't culture the word of the year, last year?  I asked President Sullivan, and if I could interview some of the students who studied within the humanities and were raring to go out and change the world. One of your classmates, Grace Gaskill, graduated 18 months early. Really? A year and a half early? Yes, I am really impressed with how hard so many of you have worked to get this precious degree from UVM. Grace is already out in the world doing social justice work. And the most important thing she has taken away from the program in integrated social sciences is how to be culturally competent. She's working at the raw edge of racism and trying to combat the xenophobia that is being trumped up in the current presidential campaign, all the while being fully aware of her status as a privileged white woman. Her volunteers at Catholic Charities in Boston are also mostly white women, but the refugees they seek homes for among wary Americans are mostly Muslims from the Middle East or Africa. So Grace is learning how to listen, how to appreciate the beliefs and values of these women and children whose entire lives have been ruptured. And her volunteers must also be ready to challenge misconceptions about refugees within the communities being asked to receive them. And that means helping American families to become more culturally competent. We can all use a little help in that regard. It's a huge undertaking, but it's clear that Grace is up to the task and thanks in no small part to what she learned here from her education in the humanities. Of course, we also need physicians and engineers and economists and computer scientists. And a number of you probably wanna be entrepreneurs or agriculturalists, teachers or nurses. And I so love to hear that because when I was in school, the only approved paths for women graduates were teaching or nursing. So a lot of us avoided it. And thank God, let's come back. The university has prepared all of you to become caring professionals. You know, we used to think that our large brains stuffed with a fine classical education made us, that's what made us unique as humans. Back in the 1600s, Descartes said as much, he had that famous declaration, I think therefore I am. Well, in the age of computers and algorithms and robots, does this statement define our human uniqueness? I mean, can you answer as many questions as Google? Are you ready to compete with robots? I'd say don't mess with robots. But in the future, even the most expensively educated Americans have to compete with these damnable little know-it-alls. And they're already being programmed to learn the way we humans learn. And if bots could write and think original material, what unique ability could define us as humans? Caring. We would not have advanced beyond the Stone Age if we weren't social animals who survived as a species because we cared for each other. Darwin taught us that our unique ability was to read each other's facial expressions. He concluded that all human beings share a set of universal facial expressions which allow us to feel each other's fright or pain or sadness. And those expressions are the core of empathy and compassion. Well, today we made better define what sets us apart as humans with a different declaration. I care, therefore I am. Caring may be the key to establishing the unity of mankind. It's like the original motto of University of Vermont, which in Latin is studies at rebus onestus, meaning UVM is for studies and other honest pursuits. What could be a more honest pursuit than caring? And because caring makes us vulnerable, it too is something that takes daring to do. Do you think of yourselves as daring? What is daring anyway? Well, it's the curiosity to take the less traveled road. It's the courage to say no to the status quo and try to find a better way. I think it sounds a lot like what Bernie Sanders has been daring to do. Now, you know, Bernie isn't the first Jewish socialist to win hearts and minds. I mean, let's remember that other radical, nonviolent revolutionary, also a simple carpenter who never called a poor lazy, never asked a leper for a copay and was a scrawny, arm-waving, wild-haired, progressive Jew. Guess who? Let's hear it for Jesus. As members of our millennial generation, you probably feel some pressure, not only to get a job and leave the comforts of a bedroom at home, but also to change the world. You hear it in colleges all over. You hear it in high schools. I mean, it might begin these days in preschool. Your classmate, Claire Wigan, is hardly alone. I asked Claire if she felt the pressure to change the world. A thousand times over, she said. In her first two years at UVM, she was learning about so many systems of oppression, so many terrible injustices in the world, she felt compelled to be an activist. She forced herself to climb the library steps and yell with a screen, with a megaphone. Is this a library or is it a dead tree graveyard? Paper is murder. Well, the problem was Claire comes from a mild-mannered family, and the more she yelled and screamed, the more she felt like a fraud. In her sophomore year, she had a full-blown identity crisis. After giving up the identity of activist, she felt lost. What was she supposed to do with all this paralyzing information about the injustice and repression in the world? She called her mother. Mom, I'm drowning. You're drowning? What for, dear? That's a feeling that I need to shout about. All I'm learning. You need to swim out of that channel quickly, dear. Well, Claire decided to go off on a research trip to capture stories of female agriculturalists and honest pursuit, and a quiet time which allowed her to think and reflect. On return, she consulted with her advisor. She learned that there are many ways to care and to reconcile our feelings of guilt and powerlessness to change the world. Or, as Claire puts it, not to have to be so shouty about it. And that felt freeing to her. That passage took a year, which is normal. And when Claire became a senior, she teamed up with two classmates in the environmental studies program, Olivia Burt and Layla Rossvani. For their honors thesis, they have been teaching students to think critically about the alternative food movement and how to make its practices accessible to people who are not white or middle class.  Well, that's the first question I asked Finn Galloway Kane, another of your graduating classmates. And this question was routine. I just said, what were your parents' expectations of you growing up that I would be able to read? Read? Well, Finn grew up in a poor area of Vermont where he went to kindergarten dressed in a suit and tie because he thought it was like going to work. But Finn failed kindergarten. At six, he thought his problem was he was a little crazy. But going into first grade, he was diagnosed as a dyslexic. He tried kindergarten again, working with a language specialist every day. And even though reading books was always something Finn had to work at, extra hard, reading people and their needs came to him instinctively. So he kept up his hard work and caring for others all through high school, focused on community service. Finn wasn't a straight A student, but he showed that he could take on leadership roles. He won a scholarship to UVM and found a home in the Dewey House for Community Service. He spent a semester interning for Senator Leahy, lucky fellow. And I asked Finn, what's the most daring thing you've done in your life? Going to Washington DC, I never lived outside of Vermont. I knew nobody. I wouldn't have the support system I had at UVM. But he had a fantastic opportunity to be a White House intern. But I definitely doubted myself. How could he keep up with such a fast-paced environment in Washington, Capitol Hill, grueling work? I asked how he overcame his fears through failing and fixing it. That is the secret. The first time his boss handed back an assignment and said, this is not good enough, then you need to do better. Then admitted that it takes him longer to write. That meant he had to put in more hours, 55 to 60 hours a week. One week he was put in charge of creating events for 150 students who'd been incarcerated, or a family member incarcerated. So he drew on other parts of his character, his natural comic gift, his ability to connect easily with people, and he was able to make those students feel at home, even in the White House. His mentors saw Finn a natural leader. And from his time in DC, he learned that he wants to be an education policymaker. But before he's ready to take that leap, he knows he needs to spend time teaching in the classroom. But he wanted a city like Baltimore, where the public education system has failed its young people, and where racial injustice caused them to erupt in violent riots. And I've just learned that Finn Galloway Kane has been offered a position in Baltimore, teaching high school history and government.  I know what he'll say. He'll say, I can still make a great cappuccino. That's my fallback. But I don't think he'll need it. Well, in every adult life passage, we seek a truer or more pure and even permanent identity. When it will resolve at last our limitations and allow us to overcome all our weaknesses, forget it. Out of the thousands, maybe millions of life history interviews I've done, I've never heard anyone say, I finally found it a state of pure goodness and greatness. But then I haven't had a chance to interview all the presidential candidates. Maybe the best of what we take away from our undergraduate years at university is not what we're required to take, not the skill-based courses that promise to gain a submission to the hottest field or most lucrative career, but the least tangible rewards of our college years. The new furnishings in the empty rooms or our minds that remind us how to think critically and compassionately. The memorable experiences we've had with all kinds of people.  Maybe it was the love interest who broke your girlish heart when you found out he only wanted to borrow your bra. Maybe it was the flush of pleasure you felt when you filled backpacks with nutritious meals for the many children in Vermont who struggle with hunger. These kinds of intangible experiences I promise you have seeped into your brain, expanded your emotional intelligence and helped to shape what people will sense about you, your character. Your intelligence will open many doors for you, but it's your emotional intelligence that will allow you to hold open doors for others.


In modern corporations the role of CFO has gained a significant consideration. Now CFO is not considered as a person who is responsible for management of the funds entrusted to him by the shareholders. But CFO is also considered to have the capability to advise the board members from their operating decisions to their strategic decisions who are concerned from the profitability of a firm to its long term sustainability. So, we can say that the role of a modern CFO is equally significant along with the roles performed by its peers in any modern corporate firm. In this regard, the CNMikers point of view with reference to a CFO can be explained or depicted in certain questions like, as a CFO, how should I measure the performance of my own company against the performance of my competitors. So, that is our decision that has to be taken by a CFO. Next, what drives the stock value of my company? We know that a CFO being an officer of the company is equally responsible to work in the best interest of the shareholders and by best interest of the shareholder means the wealth maximization of the shareholders. In terms of finance, the wealth maximization means an increase in the share prices of the shares held by shareholders of a corporate firm in which a person is working as a CFO. The third question is, how shall I design incentive system to reduce agency cost between owners, managers and shareholders? So we see that there is a shift from a normal accountant by a CFO to wider range of questions a CFO needs to answer. If we describe the evolutionary change in the CFO's role, we see that during the mid-century of the last, particularly in the 1950s to 1960s, little role was performed by the CFO. Like he was responsible for record keeping of all business transactions, he was supposed to head internal audit function of the corporate firm. He was required to report financial results to the shareholders. Largely, all these three roles are equally and in the same spirit performed by CFOs in every country in generally family owned firms but today there has been a little change, rather significant change. Like one of the top three decision makers in the firm like chief operating officers or chief executive officers, decisions like investment decisions, financing decisions and managing management decisions, equally a CFO is assumed to perform his role in all these three decisions. If we see the CFO's responsibilities in today's modern firm, he is supposed to perform in financing decisions in investment decisions and particularly in managerial decisions. Let's start about managerial decisions which is a new dimension in the responsibilities basket of a modern CFO. These decisions include performance management of business units individually and collectively. He is supposed to determine the debt parameters or measures against which the performance of unit managers is determined by the firm. He is supposed to set budget limits and review these budget limits in accordance with available funds. He is used to advice in personal management in setting a remuneration for the managers or the officers in order to attract them, to retain them and motivate them to work for their best. He is supposed to ensure performance compatible incentive design so that the personal working in the company may work for the best interest of the shareholders. He is assumed to communicate financial results and firms policies to the external community. Apart from all these responsibilities at the managerial level, he is also assumed to ensure regulatory compliance and its disclosure to the regulatory authorities and to the external community who is interested in this compliance. Being a key person in the firm, he is supposed to develop and maintain loans among all the departments of the carpet. The next domain is the financial decency. We know that CFO is a person who is interested with the funds taken internally or generated externally. So he is supposed to manage these funds effectively and efficiently in the best interest of the shareholders. He is supposed to use funds in such a way that the shareholders' wealth can be maximized. In this regard, he is supposed to advise board members regarding capital structure of the firm, regarding dividend policy of the firm and the effect of these decents on the firm's financial health and its riskiness. He is responsible for auditing the financial statements of the firm and they are reporting to the external communities. He is responsible to develop a risk management framework along with setting and designing risk tolerance limits in terms of insurance contracts, hedging contracts and the net risks exposure of these contracts on the shareholders' capital. He is supposed to work in line with the agencies who are contacted for assessment of the company's credit risk. He is also assumed to perform in planning at all level at the corporate firm. Either it is a long-range planning, it is a medium-range planning from time point of view or either it is an operating plan or a strategic level plan. Whether it is an overall business plan or an insurance plan or a tax planning, whatever the planning phase is there. Finally, another core job of a modern CFO, he is assumed to review capital expenditure under the domain of capital budgeting. He advises to the board members that what analytical tool is appropriate to assess the capital expenditure, its effect on the firm's financial health, its riskiness and he is assumed to advise the board member to set the limit of capital expenditure under consideration. So far as research and development functions at the corporate firm is there, he is assumed to advise regarding the expenditure allocation in this phase for strategic responsibility in terms of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, risk teachers. He is assumed to determine the net impact of these merger, acquisition and divestiture policies. This vestiture policies on the shareholders' wealth. So far as the firm's ownership structure is there, he is assumed to advise on the effect of ownership dilution as a result of new equity issue, as a result of issuance of convertible bonds on debt covenant violation, equity car routes, issuance of executive stock options and all those financial instruments issues that may have a significant implication both on the financial health of the company and on the wealth of the shareholders. Apart from these investment decisions in the last but not the least, a modern CFO is assumed to play his significant role in the working capital management practices of a modern corporate firm, either it belongs to cash management, receivables management, inventory management, tax management or payables management. This role cannot be ignored.


Questions drive thinking. Well, actually we should say that questioning is the driving force of critical thinking. For the next few minutes, I'd like for us to think about what it means to ask critical questions. According to Donald Luck in Why Study Theology, education exposes us to wider ranges of experience than we could ever possibly have on our own. That's the constant miracle of reading books. In reading them, we are enriched by sharing the internal and external worlds of many other persons. And if we are receptive to what we encounter, we can have our horizons expanded. But in order to profit most from our reading, we need to learn how to carry on critical dialogue with the text. Education gives us increased measures of information and enables us to develop skills. Perhaps the most challenging and important of these skills is critical thinking. When we use the words critical or criticism, as in critical thinking or biblical criticism, we don't necessarily mean something negative, like when we say, he's so critical or don't criticize me. The English words critical and criticism are rooted in the Greek word krino or in kritikos. And this word family means to judge or to separate or to make a distinction or to draw out and isolate particularities. In critical thinking, then, we learn to make judgments about a text based upon a careful process of distinguishing particularities. So what does this mean? When we encounter a text, we're encountering someone's thinking. And behind this thinking are very important components. These components are not always explicit. Usually they look behind the curtain. The components of thinking include the goals and purposes, questions at issue, an information base, inferences and conclusions, concepts and ideas, assumptions, implications and consequences, viewpoints and perspectives. Now questions help us to get behind the curtain in order to discern and consider these components of thoughts. Let's consider this example of a very nice sounding text. He thinks of himself as daddy. Just a fellow like millions of others making the most of every day, working with a purpose and then relaxing to live with his family and friends. His age? He feels so young that the years don't matter. He's the best playmate his wife and youngsters ever had. And why not? No setting sun sees him bringing home the cares of the day. No rising sun fails to find him refreshed and eager to greet the new day. Well, that is a nice sounding text. But what we find is that actually this sweet sounding text is part of a 1940s advertisement for alcohol. Questions specifically related to each component of thought help us to get behind the curtain and discern the meaning and the intention of the text. So we ask what is the author's explicit main point? Does she articulate a purpose for writing? What is the issue or problem that she is addressing? What underlying questions are guiding her writing? What types of evidence is he using to support his claim? From what sources does he draw this information? Are these sources reliable and authoritative? Or what line of reasoning draws her thinking? What is her conclusion? Is her reasoning sound? Is her conclusion valid? What is the conceptual framework within which the author is writing? What terms require further definition? What knowledge does the author assume the reader shares? And how does she assume that readers will respond? For whom does this conclusion have implication? What are the consequences of this line of thinking? Whom does the author claim should change or do something in response to this thinking? What is the author's own background? How does this impact or inform his thinking? Does he acknowledge his own biases? Does he admit the limitations of his reasoning or approach? And finally, we need to ask, how does the author intend to shape my own thinking through this text? These are the types of questions that help us discern the particularities that inform text, including the text that we create ourselves. So to conclude, Richard Paul and Linda Elder summarize what we've been discussing in their book, The Thinker's Guide to the Art of Socratic Questioning. In other words, critical thinking is the systematic monitoring of thought with the end goal of improvement. When we think critically, we realize that thinking must not be accepted at face value, but must be analyzed and assessed for its clarity, accuracy, relevance, depth, breadth, and logicalness. We recognize that all reasoning occurs within points of view and frames of reference, that all reasoning proceeds from some goals and objectives, and has an informational base, that all data, when used in reasoning, must be interpreted, that interpretation involves concepts, that concepts entail assumptions, and that all basic inferences in thought have implications. Because problems in thinking can occur in any of these dimensions, each dimension must be monitored. Critical thinking provides us with definitive and specific tools for questioning. Alright, so now you have permission to start being critical.


Hey, what's going on guys this be over here for another trailer reaction This is the second official trailer for Deadpool 2 title Deadpool meat cable very excited about this All the thing that buzz me out about this movie is it was supposed to come out the first weekend of June But they moved it up two weeks to come out mid-May. So that's gonna be kind of Competing with Avengers Infinity War, but you know, I don't think that's a good idea But you know, hey, what do I know? But really excited for this trailer So let me go ahead and put on these headphones and you guys can stop listening me talk and watch me watch this trailer Three two one go. I was born into war bread into it People think they understand pain But they have no concept of it What's the most pain you've ever felt Maybe the kind that leaves you more machine than man wait.    That's not something Zip it cable. I got the stones to help you. So that's not something to say. Oh my god No biting. They're done already. Oh Wow, that was unrealistically fast.  I like the trailer just said I know that he does come from the future and that he comes back and you know He's just wrecking havoc on everything. I don't even know how his eye is like that I could look it up, but I'm just not the biggest You know cable expert. I like the character.  I don't remember exactly how I used to know But my memory is shot right now But I'm really excited about it. I really like Josh Brolin, you know, he's a fantastic actor We get to see him as Thanos and the Avengers Infinity War and then two weeks later We get to see him in a completely different universe as As cable as Nathan Summers. Yeah, yeah, Nathan Summers. So yeah, I know he's related directly to Cyclops Now he may be I Let me know in the comment section below. I can't believe I'm forgetting that right now But we got to see Cable of course Deadpool of course in the trailer. We also got to see The the character from the last movie the Negasonic Teenage Warhead and also I think that was Domino with the Afro I could be wrong. Please correct me in the comment section below But I am really excited about this movie Of course, we probably won't get Colossus back to the only thing There's two things that concern me outside of the movie inside of the movie outside of the movie I already talked about I don't like when superhero movies comic book movies are stacked on top of each other At least give it one month apart, you know, so the May 18th thing I'm really not a fan of that because I want things to do well at the box office as much as possible But inside the movie this movie is being directed by David Leach He did he was the co-director for John Wick one and I wish I love that movie was fantastic, but he also did Atomic Blonde which came out last Last year and I was not a fan of that at all Tim Miller is not coming back But you know May 18th is gonna be here before we know it and you know I am looking forward to the movie. Well guys, that's just my opinion of the trailer What did you think that you like it that you hated did it turn you on did it turn you off? Do you agree with me or do you disagree with me? Let me know in the comment section below Let's get this conversation going and keep it flowing If you liked this video go ahead and give me a thumbs up and if you don't this fine Go ahead and subscribe to my channel Click the bell so you can be notified when I make uploads go to my website check me out there book market And also look me up on social media Facebook Instagram and Twitter It's right at the bottom of your screen and I made it very easy by providing a link to all that good stuff down in the description Box below and again guys it really helped me out if you do like my Facebook page If you like my content and you want to see me grow but guys Thank you again for tuning in to my opinion slash view slash reaction for the official Deadpool trailer number two title Deadpool me cable and before you go don't forget that my name is brandy. They bring and that's just my opinion peace


Oh hi, it's January 4th and I'm here with my 52 paintings in 2022 update. Did I reach my goal? I have no idea to be honest with you because I really loved everything to the last minute and I was just painting, painting, painting, painting. I wasn't counting. I was just painting up the storm. I was wrestling up the storm. I gave paintings away as gifts. I was painting with the kids over the holidays. So all or not. But the point was to just be regular with my artwork and that for sure I did. Anyway, you know there's like that quote that you should shoot for the moon and even if you miss, you follow amongst the stars. That could be the case in this case but you know who says that, right? Who says that? Losers, losers say that. But regardless, I have a lot of fun and I have a new goal for 2023 which is to stop procrastinating, obviously. Anyways, I hope you guys make a lot of art. Happy new year and that's it from me.