Anti-Lectures, Jazz-Funk, and Drawing: HSE University Holds Economfest 2024
The Faculty of Economic Sciences celebrated its 32nd birthday. Students, graduates, teachers, and friends gathered for the traditional EconomFest at HSE University on Pokrovsky Bulvar. The event featured quizzes from language clubs, contests, lectures, and meetings with teachers. Festival guests enjoyed dancing, drawing lessons, new acquaintances and a three-tier cake, ie everything needed to make it a truly special event.
Dancing, Music, Prizes
The HSE Faculty of Economic Sciences traditionally celebrates its birthday on May 31. Performances by teachers and guests, music, dancing and workshops took place all day, attracting the attention of the entire university. While congratulating the students and staff of FES, HSE University Rector Nikita Anisimov wished the faculty great success in developing competencies and continuing to train talented and promising staff.
Dancing and music accompanied the celebration all day. A whole series of activities were offered in the atrium of the university building on Pokrovsky Bulvar: The Shazam show was organised for true music lovers; festival guests could also play table tennis, eat popcorn, and take part in workshops: draw on canvases, make souvenirs from modelling clay, collect trendy beads for their phones, and much more.
The HSE ‘Case club’ offered challenges to those who wanted to try their hand at solving a unique bank case and earn coins for completing it, which could then be exchanged for merch and sweets in a souvenir shop. Random Dating, which was already familiar to EconomFest participants, was another event activity: here you could chat on set topics, broaden your horizons, and meet new people.
Rumors, Tips, Quizzes
Traditionally, not only students, but teachers as well participate in the activities. During the festival, students could chat with Sergey Volodin, Associate Professor at the Department of Financial Market Infrastructure, and Maxim Markin, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Economic Sociology in an informal atmosphere.
Those who didn’t feel like chatting, and were ready to win, hurried to sign up for the QUIZ. Here a team of faculty teachers, including Tatyana Malofeeva, Senior Lecturer at the School of Finance, Dmitry Poduhovich, Analyst at the Centre for Project Development and Integration, Alexander Chelekhovsky, Senior Lecturer at the Department of Theoretical Economics, and Elizaveta Masenkova, Teaching and Learning Specialist at the International Office, tested their knowledge along with the students.
Improbability Theory and ‘Statistical Hell’
Associate Professor at the Department of Applied Economics Elena Kossova and Associate Professor at the Department of Statistics and Data Analysis Yuliya Mironkina conducted an anti-lecture dedicated to the history of the use of probability theory.
Yulia Mironkina shared some interesting challenges faced by great scientists and the paradoxes associated with them. Elena Kossova spoke on how statistics help to identify perpetrators and prove guilt, and also shared a life hack on how to catch students cheating. It turned out that probability theory and mathematical statistics help a lot in these cases.
At the end of the lecture, Yuliya Mironkina read a letter from her former student: ‘Yuliya Nikolaevna, please tell me how to apply statistical methods so that I do not burn in statistical hell?’ The speakers gave the following answer to this question: we must remember that even great mathematicians have failed, and we should apply methods and schemes to solving problems very carefully.
Traditions, Cake, Happiness
At the event, Sergey Pekarski, Dean of the Faculty of Economic Sciences, congratulated guests and participants of EconomFest 2024: ‘Dear friends, let's be happy to be in such a wonderful place. And this place is not just a mere building, it is our home, our faculty and tradition. This is very important: traditions, in fact, are passed from one student to another, from one generation to another. These traditions shape you as graduates and shape the profession of an economist in our country, because Economic Sciences is the number one faculty. Congratulations on this wonderful day! May you always be joyful, enter the faculty with bright thoughts, high expectations, and wonderful plans for the future. I wish happiness to you all!’
A huge three-tier cake with the logo of the Economfest attracted almost everyone who was in the atrium. In the cake queue, prospective and established economists joked on calculating the time spent waiting to receive a piece. Despite all the jokes, all guests received cake quite quickly.
Specially for EconomFest, the Spanish, Italian, French, and Latin American HSE clubs held a quiz on the peculiarities of economies and traditions of different countries. In the evening, festival guests could join the performance of HSE Dance in the atrium. Those who were tired of dancing and preferred a quiet evening, joined the cinema club. Not only students and staff of HSE FES, but also many guests from other faculties, applicants, and graduates took part in the event at the HSE University atrium.