First, they break the usual monotony and offer a breather. Second, they offer a reality check on the theory with which students are trying to understand for the first time. The immediate relevance of the theory has been, in our experience, an important incentive for the students to retain what they have learned. This is why we have tried systematically to present an example whenever a new concept is introduced or a new result is established. This is a recipe we have experimented with in class with great success.
Students enjoy relating their own experiences to the principles they learn.
The improved quality of the transparencies supplied as an add-on should make this option more attractive. Of course, examples are not proofs. Yet it is our belief that it is inappropriate to submit theories to formal analysis in an introductory textbook. Informal inference and introspection can generate many of the propositions and theories that we present, which to our minds represent a consensus view of macroeconomics in the 1990s. In the forefront was our concern not to reinforce the familiar stereotype of 'two-handed economists' unwilling to take a stand .