Week 12 Session: Closing crit

The last session. Positions close, the class ledger goes on the screen, and week 1's argument acquires people it applies to.

24 May 2027

Before the session#

Close everything and put the closing rows in the log. Then total two columns: what you finished with, and what the counterfactual column says you would have finished with had you done nothing after week 4.

Submit both numbers, plus your starting balance and your track, to the class ledger. Submission is anonymous by default — the ledger shows a track, a percentage and a dollar figure, not a name. You may attach your name if you want to, and about half the room does, usually the half that is up.

In the session#

The ledger (20 min). Every position in the class, sorted by outcome, on one screen. This is the only artefact in the course that no individual student can produce, and it is the reason the numbers are collected in a single format from week 1 — thirty logs in thirty formats do not add up to a distribution.

Read it before anyone interprets it. Note how many are above their starting balance, and note the spread between the best and the worst.

The interpretation (30 min). The people at the top of the ledger explain what they did. They are not being set up; their explanations are usually specific, internally consistent and correct about the facts. Then we put week 1’s two numbers next to them, and the room decides what the explanations are worth.

The same treatment is then applied to the bottom of the ledger, which is the half of the exercise that students find harder and which matters more for the final project: a loss is not evidence of bad judgement any more than a gain is evidence of good judgement. Only the decomposition is evidence.

Afterwards#

The final project is due at the end of the week. Its last section asks you to re-read the four answers you filed in the first session — unrevised, in your own handwriting, from before you knew any of the vocabulary you now have.

That re-reading is the course, and it is why the record was sealed in February.