Level Of Exposition Research Articles

Two New Textbooks in Medicine

The task of textbook writers and editors is becoming increasingly more difficult. They face progressively more troublesome problems in choosing the level of exposition, selecting material and providing suitable emphasis and evaluation. Of current medical texts some are comprehensive and try to cover all of medicine; others restrict themselves to a particular area. Some try to give almost encyclopedic coverage; others are content to provide only the essentials. Some are large, others are much larger. Virtually none are small. The two new textbooks of medicine which arrived at this editor's desk on the same day have many things in common and also many points of divergence. One of the features they share is a dissatisfaction with previous textbooks of medicine. Both new texts try new approaches. <i>Internal Medicine Based on Mechanisms of Disease</i>is carefully designed for a specific audience. The editors have recognized that the conventional texts, with their

Quantity and Price Indexes in National Accounts

This concise Report is intended to be a sequel to Professor Stone's Standardised System of National Accounts, also published by O.E.E.C., several years ago. While there are a number of connecting links between the two studies, the emphasis and manner of exposition are notably different. Professor Stone's aim here is to expound the application of Laspeyres' and Paasche's index-numbers over the framework of aggregated commodity transactions— a task that he accomplishes with polished restraint and imaginative dexterity. Chapters I and II are mainly concerned to clear away possible misunderstandings as to what can and cannot be brought within the measuring rod he is wielding, given the present state of empirical knowledge. Chapter III develops the price/quantity dichotomy in various social accounting settings, and Chapter IV treads cautiously among the hazards of “ measuring “ or “ indicating “ quantitatively certain kinds of quality changes. Chapters V and VI deal respectively with problems of routing commodity flows and with the interesting difficulties connected with seasonal variation. The final chapters demonstrate the arbitrary nature of attempting to reduce an accounting system to a balance in constant prices, discuss the more general problems of choosing indicators, weights and a base-year, and list briefly the main types of index-number in use. There is a helpful Summary and some excellent advice on how to economise scarce statistical resources. While the Report is for the most part written in a clear literary style, the level of exposition varies a great deal. Passages in which any student familiar with the elements of index-number and national income accounting should feel completely at home alternate in several sections of Chapters II—VI with highly technical excursions into matrix algebra and demand theory.

Teaching by Publication

Remarks upon the present shortcomings of publications dealing with physics at both scholarly and popular levels of exposition, with suggestions for improvement.

The Efficiency of Feeding Livestock

THE significance to the economics of production of the patterns in which the productive elements are combined has long been recognized. This phenomenon, and its corollary, the varying returns to any single element, have been treated either as studies of individual operations or as hypothetical schedules for an entire industry set up for classroom illustration.' This paper represents an attempt to derive comprehensive ratios between the elements of production for a selected industry, the livestock industry. It therefore is associated with the second of the two customary methodologies. But it extends beyond the hypothetical level of exposition, for factual data are utilized. One approach to the subject would be to assemble and summate all available experimental data on feeding livestock. More recently there have been studies of a somewhat different type, the most publicized of which is one relating to dairying conducted jointly by the Bureaus of Agricultural Economics and Dairy Industry.'2 In this study observations of the relationship of feed input to milk production at varying intensities of feeding were made at 10 State Experiment Stations on cows maintained under carefully regulated experimental conditions. The control of the intensity of feeding is the unique and most important feature of the study. The results provide the most useful data for a given class of livestock that are available.