Chapter 309 Seeking Advice
He tapped on the table.
"Zhou Heng".
Zhou Heng opened his eyes and turned his head to look at him.
"Have you finished your homework?" Xiao Jue asked.
"Um."
"Can you help me with this question?" Xiao Jue turned his laptop to show him. "I've read this question three times, but I still don't understand what it's trying to get me to calculate."
Zhou Heng stood up, walked over, and bent down to look at the screen.
His gaze lingered on the question for about half a minute, scanning it from beginning to end, and then he looked at it again from the beginning, this time more slowly.
"This is an application analysis of the price elasticity of demand," Zhou Heng said, his voice low but clear. "It gives you two sets of data, one before the price change and the other after the price change."
You need to calculate the elasticity coefficient first, then determine whether the demand is elastic or inelastic based on the value of the elasticity coefficient, and finally analyze the impact of this elasticity characteristic on the firm's pricing strategy.
Xiao Jue blinked after hearing this.
"Say it again?"
Zhou Heng glanced at him, but showed no impatience.
He picked up a pen from the table and wrote two formulas on Xiao Jue's draft paper.
He spoke slowly, pausing after each sentence to make sure Xiao Jue was following before continuing.
Xiao Jue stared at the two formulas on the draft paper for a while, then looked at the question. The data and concepts in his mind, which were originally a tangled mess, actually began to straighten out a little after Zhou Heng's few words.
Xiao Jue followed Zhou Heng's steps to calculate the first step, came up with a number, and then glanced back at Zhou Heng.
"Yes," Zhou Heng said.
With this certainty, Xiao Jue continued his calculations.
His calculation skills are quite good, and once he has a clear idea of what to do, he can quickly move forward with the subsequent steps.
Occasionally, when he got stuck, he would turn his head to look at Zhou Heng. Before he could speak, Zhou Heng would point to a line on the draft paper and say, "Here, you substituted the wrong number" or "This step should use the changed price as the denominator."
About twenty minutes later, Xiao Jue wrote the answer to the last question on the draft paper.
He leaned back, let out a long breath, and turned to look at Zhou Heng. Zhou Heng nodded. "Right."
Xiao Jue smiled.
Even the corners of his eyebrows relaxed.
"Wow, Zhou Heng, your explanations are better than my high school teacher's," he said. "You might as well stop calling yourself Zhou Heng and just call yourself Teacher Zhou."
Zhou Heng didn't respond and turned back to his seat. But in the light of the lamp, the tips of his ears seemed a little redder than usual.
Xiao Jue didn't start his homework right away. He turned around in his chair, facing Zhou Heng, and casually put one leg on the armrest.
"How did you learn so quickly?" he asked. "I glanced at that case study and didn't want to look at it again. It was over ten pages long, all data and interviews, like reading gibberish."
"Just watch it a few more times," Zhou Heng said.
"I watched it twice, and the more I watched it, the more confused I became."
Zhou Heng thought for a moment and said, "First, skim through it to get a general idea of what it's about. Second, read it carefully and mark the key data and contradictions. Third, read it with questions in mind; whichever theory you want to use for analysis, specifically look for arguments that support that theory."
He spoke very simply, without any secrets or shortcuts. He just said to read it a few more times.
From that day on, Xiao Jue naturally had a regular person to ask him questions.
There were no classes on Tuesday afternoon, and the sun made the dormitory feel like a greenhouse. Xiao Jue got out of bed, washed up, and sat down next to Zhou Heng with his laptop.
"I didn't quite understand the concept of cross-price elasticity of demand today. Could you explain it to me?"
Zhou Heng was reading a professional book. Upon hearing this, he clipped the bookmark to his book, closed the book, and took Xiao Jue's notebook to glance at it.
"Weren't you paying attention in class?"
"I listened, but the teacher spoke too fast. I only took half of my notes before they became a mess." Xiao Jue said this confidently, as if he were stating something perfectly reasonable.
Zhou Heng glanced at him, said nothing, and picked up a pen to draw a coordinate system in the blank space of Xiao Jue's notebook.
Cross-price elasticity measures how sensitive the quantity demanded of one good is to a change in the price of another good. The formula is the percentage change in quantity demanded divided by the percentage change in the price of the other good.
He marked two points on the coordinate axis and drew two lines.
"Positive numbers represent substitutes, and negative numbers represent complements. A value greater than zero means that when the price of B increases, the demand for A increases, indicating that A and B are substitutes; a value less than zero means that when the price of B increases, the demand for A decreases, indicating that A and B are complements."
He finished speaking and looked up. "For example, coffee and tea: if the price of coffee increases, the demand for tea increases, so the cross-price elasticity is positive. Coffee and creamer: if the price of coffee increases, the demand for creamer decreases, so the cross-price elasticity is negative."
Xiao Jue looked at the coordinate system and the two short formulas, and suddenly smiled.
"Your explanation is clearer than half a lesson our teacher taught us."
Zhou Heng handed the pen back to him without saying a word.
Xiao Jue took the notebook back and neatly copied down the formulas and coordinate system. After copying them, he added his own interpretation below, writing "positive substitution, negative complementation," his handwriting so messy it looked like a doctor's prescription.
Later, he simply set aside a section on his desk specifically for storing the draft papers that Zhou Heng had used when explaining problems to him.
The edges of the draft paper were rolled up, and it was covered with Zhou Heng's elegant handwriting and Xiao Jue's own wild and unrestrained annotations.
On Wednesday evening, Xiao Jue sat at his desk for another half hour, staring blankly at the calculation problem about marginal utility and consumer equilibrium.
He looked at the questions for five minutes, then at the textbook for three minutes, and then picked up his phone to send a message to Zhou Heng.
Xiao Jue: In the library?
Zhou Heng: Hmm.
Xiao Jue: When are you coming back?
Zhou Heng: It will take another hour.
Xiao Jue: There's a question I don't know the answer to. I'll wait for you to come back and explain it to me.
Zhou Heng: Send it over so I can take a look.
Xiao Jue took a picture of the title and sent it over.
About five minutes later, Zhou Heng sent his text reply, paragraph by paragraph, like a concise and to-the-point solution report.
"The core of this problem is the consumer equilibrium condition: MUx/Px = MUy/Py. First, list the marginal utilities of the two goods, then divide them by their respective prices. The combination where the marginal utilities are equal is the optimal consumption combination."
Then another sentence followed:
"Take a look at the data in the third row, the column with MUy. I suspect the third number is a printing error. Please recalculate it using the formula on page 87 of the textbook."
Xiao Jue stared at the text for a few seconds and typed: "You're too good. You can even spot a printing error through the screen."
Zhou Heng did not reply.
Xiao Jue smiled and began to calculate according to his line of thought.
When Zhou Heng returned from the library, Xiao Jue had just finished writing the last word of his homework.
As soon as he pushed the door open, Xiao Jue turned his chair around and patted the few sheets of draft paper covered with calculations on the table.
"I've handed in my homework, Teacher Zhou. Please check it."
Zhou Heng put down his schoolbag, walked over, and looked down at the equations.
Xiao Jue's handwriting, like himself, is flamboyant and unrestrained. He writes numbers in large, loose strokes and draws equal signs like wavy lines.
The steps were complete, the logic was sound, and the final result was correct.
Zhou Heng read through the pages line by line, and finally tapped the bottom right corner of the last page with his finger.
"Don't forget to write down this unit."
Xiao Jue looked down—he had indeed forgotten.
"Okay, okay, I'll add it now." He picked up a pen, added a unit symbol after the number, then looked up at Zhou Heng. "Any other questions?"
"That's all," Zhou Heng said.
Xiao Jue put away his homework, put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair. He watched Zhou Heng go to the sink to wash his face, wipe it hastily, and then return to his seat and turn on the desk lamp.