In our latest podcast, “Why Is ‘I Don’t Know’ So Hard to Say?,” Levitt talked about how it is practically forbidden in the business world to say that you don’t know the answer to a question, lest you be deemed incompetent or irrelevant.
That idea has generated some reader feedback that I thought was interesting enough to share. First, from Mike Wrubel, an office manager for a medical practice in Elkhart, Indiana:
I would generally agree with the notion that people in business are very much inclined to not say “I don’t know.” I have worked in the same hospital for 20 years, and while I am very comfortable saying it, not everyone else is. I think people fear being perceived by others as they are not paying attention to their work, or being seen as incompetent, or that it’s their job to “know.”
1. Danny Kahneman‘s Thinking, Fast and Slow
2. Is “big data” really ready for primetime?
3. An economist (Laurence Kotlikoff) is running for President. (Did he listen to this?) His books include The Coming Generational Storm and Spend ‘Til the End: Raising Your Living Standard in Today’s Economy and When You Retire
(HT: Peter Coy)
4. Active trading — of military products! — between countries at war. (Especially interesting in light of Iran’s blockade threat.) (HT: David Wigram)
Research in Motion, the Waterloo, Ontario, company that makes BlackBerrys, has been hemorrhaging market share in North America. But a blog reader named Jon Markman, a lawyer living in Washington, D.C., has discovered a land where the BlackBerry still dominates:
I wanted to send along an interesting thing I noticed on a recent trip to the Dominican Republic to visit my in-laws.
In the past when I’ve been there, I’ve noticed that everyone uses a BlackBerry; my wife and I were the only people I’d ever seen using anything else (other than a “dumb” phone, but those are pretty rare these days everywhere!). I figured it was only a matter of time; trends and technology seem to often lag a little when making it to the island. Given that BlackBerry has fading for years, I thought, soon it would fade there, too.
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “The Hidden Cost of False Alarms.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)
The central facts: between 94 and 99 percent of burglar-alarm calls turn out to be false alarms, and false alarms make up between 10 and 20 percent of all calls to police.
There are at least three things to consider upon learning these facts:
1. If a particular medical screening had such a high false-positive rate, it would likely be considered worse than worthless; but:
2. With more than 2 million annual burglaries in the U.S., perhaps it’s worth putting up with so many false positives in service of the greater deterrent; as long as:
3. The cost of all those false positives are borne by the right people.
Can you already figure out whether No. 3 is in fact the case?
… that @Freakonomics will soon hit 400,000 followers.
FWIW, we are spiffing up for re-released the Twitter podcast we did a while back. Anything we missed in that episode that we can fix?
Back in 2008, shortly after the Presidential election, we solicited reader questions for Congressman Ron Paul, who had run for President that year. He happens to be running again this year and, in light of his strong third-place showing in the Iowa caucuses last night, I thought it might be interesting to republish his replies. They are well-considered and interesting throughout, and it is especially interesting to read them four years later in light of how political circumstances have shifted (or haven’t).
Q.What was your first thought when you found out McCain chose Palin as his running mate?
A. At first, I thought it was a pretty savvy choice from a political perspective. I also knew that she had said some nice things about me in the past. At the same time, I knew that to be on the ticket, she would have to toe the line on foreign policy and the war, so that tempered a lot of my enthusiasm.
Q. Who in Congress would you consider to be your closest peer(s)?
A. There are a lot of members who I work with on a variety of different issues. Walter Jones is a good friend and works with me on foreign policy. Often on spending, if there is a 432-3 vote, the other two congressmen voting with me are Jeff Flake and Paul Broun. A lot of times, I work with Democrats on civil liberties issues. I guess my point is that people from all over the political spectrum can side with liberty and the Constitution. The goal is to get a majority to vote that way most of the time.
Levitt and Dubner answer your FREAK-quently Asked Questions about certifying politicians, irrational fears, and the toughest three words in the English language.
Alan Pisarski, a transportation scholar featured in our podcast about the disappearance of hitchhiking, writes in to say:
My niece was back home in Milwaukee visiting family and stocked up on bagels, lox, and cream cheese to take home to Kentucky (forget for our purposes the madness of thinking that Milwaukee has a clue about bagels etc. – she is right – at least they have heard of them in contrast to KY). Anyways, the wonderful folk at TSA said she could take the bagels on board and the lox, but the cream cheese was out! But being proud civil servants – an oxymoron if ever there was one — they agreed that it would be okay, and she could bring it on board, if the cream cheese was spread on the bagels. Please write this down for future reference.
Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is called “A Rose By Any Other Distance.” (You can download/subscribe at iTunes, get the RSS feed, listen via the media player above, or read the transcript below.)
With Mother’s Day coming up, we thought it’d be interesting to look at the cut-flower industry. Americans spend about $12 billion a year on them. Mario Valle, a wholesaler at the L.A. Flower District, tells us that Mother’s Day is easily his biggest day of the year: “It’s 30 percent of my year. Everyone has a mother!”
Today’s question on “Football Freakonomics” is a tricky one. Which incentive is stronger for an NFL player: landing a big contract or winning the Super Bowl?
It can be devilishly hard to find out what truly motivates people to do what they do. There are a lot of reasons for this. Different people have different preferences; an incentive that works for a while may wear off over time; and it’s dangerous to rely on what people say about their motivation, since most of us are concerned about saying “the right thing.”
It’s better, therefore, to measure actual behavior – in this case, for instance, how players perform before and after signing a big contract.
A reader named Tim Wadlow writes in with an interesting theory:
I spent about 10 years as a operations management consultant, working with dirty, dull, and dangerous manufacturing companies.
After spending time at roughly 100 manufacturing locations around the world, I noticed an odd trend: the direction that employees parked in their parking spots highly correlated with employee morale and satisfaction with their jobs. Most of the cars parked forward? A good company to work for, with employees who want to get to work. Most cars backwards? It seems as though the moment that the employee got to work, he or she was planning a quick exit.
Next time you drive by a manufacturing company check it out.
Maybe CEO’s should study Google Earth maps of their parking lots to determine if they are changing a companies culture?
These days, I read a lot of books on an iPad 2 using the Kindle app. It is for the most part a very good experience, especially for recreational reading. As millions of others have noted, having an electronic device loaded up with a mini-library of e-books is especially valuable while traveling, which is when I do a lot of my reading.
The other day, on vacation with the family, I came across a pitfall. I was reading the old football novel North Dallas Forty (thanks to Henry for the suggestion, and all of you for other suggestions). It’s pretty entertaining — especially the race stuff and drug stuff. As it happened, my 9-year-old daughter was curled up beside me reading her book (The Doll People). She took at look at what I was reading. Her eyes immediately found a four-letter word.
A reader we’ll call H., who’s in the rental-property business, writes in with a bizarre story about his bank. Assuming it is at least 60% true from both sides (his side and the bank’s), what are we to make of this?
My partner and I were looking to obtain a small business loan. Our banker told us that loans are very hard to obtain because banks are being very stringent. Not like we were going to shut down without a loan, but we figured it could help us grow the business. So, in an effort to build credit (and a good relationship) for our business with a major U.S. bank, my partner and I proposed to our banker that we would give him $50,000 cash to hold onto and in return, have the bank loan us $50k for 5 years. Basically we were securing the loan with cash as collateral. This way, we could prove to the bank that we are a responsible business and were hoping that after this first loan, the bank will be willing to lend to us in the future with more favorable terms.
Yes! That’s the argument in a new Historical Biology paper called “A Call to Search for Fossilized Gastric Pellets.” Here’s the abstract:
Numerous extant carnivorous, piscivorous and insectivorous species – including birds, pinnipeds, varanid lizards and crocodiles and mammals – routinely ingest food combined with a high proportion of indigestible material that can be neither absorbed through digestion nor eliminated as faecal matter. Their solution is to egest the indigestible portion through the mouth as a gastric pellet. The status of gastric pellets in extant species is reviewed. Arguments based on phylogeny, anatomy and biomechanics strongly suggest that many extinct species, including crocodilians and pterosaurs, may also have produced gastric pellets routinely.
We know it’s terribly dangerous to drive drunk. But heading home on foot isn’t the solution.
In Freakonomics, we wrote about how the black-white gap in America exists not only in vital matters like education, income, and health but in seemingly trivial matters like baby names and preferences in TV shows.
With that in mind, it’s interesting to take a look at a new poll by Public Policy Polling (PDF; Yahoo! writeup) about Americans’ football preferences. The headline finding is that the Green Bay Packers are now “America’s team,” with 22 percent of respondents listing the Packers as their favorite team. (I have a feeling that winning the Super Bowl last year and going 12-0 to start this season had a little something to do with that; let’s see what the poll shows this time next year.) But PPP also asked the 700+ respondents their race, gender, and voting ideology, and it’s interesting to see how the favorability rating of individual players varies.
1. NPR offers a taxonomy of online complainers; which kind are you?
2. The next sports book I’m dying to read; some background.
3. “Judicial Hellholes“: Philadelphia tops the list. (HT: Ryan)
4. Carl Bialik on silly cocaine stats.
‘Tis the season – for the firing of head coaches, that is. In the space of two weeks, three teams – the Jaguars, Chiefs, and Dolphins – canned their top man.
Allow me to make two seemingly contradictory points:
Our latest “Football Freakonomics” segment (video below) asks whether firing a head coach really does much to improve a team’s chances – or if it’s simply the standard move for losing organizations, meant to appease critics in the media, the stands, and even the locker room.
The following is a cross-post from NFL.com, where we’ve recently launched a Football Freakonomics Project. This segment aired before last Sunday’s Patriots-Broncos game.
One of the arguments both for and against Tim Tebow as a viable, long-term NFL starter is the idea that he should simply not be doing what he’s doing right now. Tebow’s critics say he’s getting far too much credit for his 7-1 record as a starter this season – that he’s benefiting from an unexplainable run of luck — while his supporters point to the exceptional performances he’s turned in immediately following those fortuitous bounces.
So how is a team that ranks second-to-last in passing yards, whose quarterback completes fewer than half his throws, pulling out miraculous victories week after week?
The thrill of customization, via Pandora and a radical new teaching method.
A reader called HDT writes to say:
I live in Mexico and have often wondered why more American economists and students of economics don’t often venture down here because the country offers what seems, to me at least, a treasure trove of economic oddities that should fascinate anyone interested in how markets work.
* As Mexico is heading toward what’s likely to be the second most important election in its history, the subject of vote-buying is of particular interest if for no other reason than that it’s practiced fairly openly, especially in rural areas. I know that during the last elections, here in Yucatan, votes were being bought, in cash, for around $80. (Pigs and cows were also exchanged for votes, but I wasn’t ever able to find out what the “going rate” was for those particular transactions.) There are, of course, people employed by the major political parties who specialize in determining what votes are worth throughout the country. I imagine they’re easier to find, and talk to, than you might expect.
* There’s also the rather intriguing issue of how Mexican real estate agents determine a reasonable price for any given property they’re hoping to sell. The problem is that it’s customary to decrease the tax burden on the sale of a home by getting the buyer to lie about how much he or paid. In other words, the sales prices stated in government records are almost never accurate. Everyone knows this. And yet, properties regularly change hands and real estate agents do manage to make a living. But how?
Any takers?
The following is a cross-post from NFL.com, where we’ve recently launched a Football Freakonomics Project.
Do home teams really have an advantage?
Absolutely. In their book Scorecasting, Toby Moscowitz and Jon Wertheim helpfully compile the percentage of home games won by teams in all the major sports. Some data sets go back further than others (MLB figures are since 1903; NFL figures are “only” from 1966, and MLS since 2002), but they are all large enough to be conclusive:
| League | Home Games Won |
| MLB | 53.9% |
| NHL | 55.7% |
| NFL | 57.3% |
| NBA | 60.5% |
| MLS | 69.1% |
So it’s hard to argue against the home-field advantage. In fact my Freakonomics co-author Steve Levitt once wrote an academic paper about the wisdom of betting (shh!) on home underdogs (more here).
But why does that advantage exist? There are a lot of theories to consider, including: “sleeping in your own bed” and “eating home cooking”, better familiarity with the home field/court, and crowd support.
On Tuesday, we shot the latest batch of our “Football Freakonomics” videos for the NFL Network.
This project has been a blast. There are a lot of people involved on the production, research, and digital sides, and they are all high-caliber and fun to work with. Our first two batches of videos were shot in Brooklyn warehouses. But on Tuesday we stepped it up, and got to work in the New York Jets’ indoor practice field out in Florham Park, N.J. (It was an off-day for the team, although there were plenty of players around doing individual workouts.)
I also ran into my old friend Nicky Dawidoff, a wonderful writer whose previous subjects range from ballplayer-spy Moe Berg
1. Fascinating article in Bloomberg Businessweek by Peter Coy about Germany’s half-trillion-dollar loan to the ECB.
2. “I am from the government, and I am here to help you”: Penn social policy dean Richard Gelles on The Third Lie
3. A catalog of wayward SWAT raids: Radley Balko‘s “Another Isolated Incident” posts (HT: Bill).
You’ve probably heard by now that the NTSB has recommended that states forbid drivers to use cell phones, whether hands-free or not. Here is a good AP article by Joan Lowy about what is known and not known about phone risk. She makes the excellent point that it’s harder to argue for a ban when highway fatalities keep falling — but that a falling death rate hardly means that cell phone use isn’t dangerous. (Off-topic but not too dissimilar: Americans are losing their taste for the death penalty, theoretically because it’s sometimes applied so haphazardly — but in truth it’s a lot easier to argue against the death penalty when the murder rate has fallen as dramatically as it has.)
In the AP article, Marcel Just of the Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging at Carnegie Mellon, puts in words why phones may cause a particular risk of distraction:
“When someone is speaking your native language, you can’t will yourself to not hear and process it. It just goes in,” Just said. Even if a driver tries to ignore the words, scientists “can see activation in the auditory cortex, in the language areas (of the brain). “
This would also explain why hearing someone else’s cell-phone chatter in public is more annoying than it ought to be.
Answer:
They are both reliant on the talents of the Rooney and Mara dynasties.
The Pittsburgh Steelers are majority-owned by the Rooney family. The late Art Rooney (“the Chief”) ran the club for many years, ultimately giving way to son Dan, who has since given way to son Art Rooney II.
The New York Giants are 50 percent owned by John Mara. The late Tim Mara ran the club for many years, ultimately giving way to his son (and John’s father) Wellington; there have been a variety of other Maras involved in the team.
“At least one nightmare scenario can be safely crossed off worst-case climate list,” Andy Revkin writes by e-mail. “Even with intense ocean warming through this millennium, thawing won’t reach the big subsea methane deposits. There were ample signs this was overblown but new work goes farther.”
He has the full story on his Dot Earth blog:
Given that methane, molecule for molecule, has at least 20 times the heat-trapping properties of carbon dioxide, it’s important to get a handle on whether these are new releases, the first foretaste of some great outburst from thawing sea-bed stores of the gas, or simply a longstanding phenomenon newly observed.
If you read the Independent of Britain, you’d certainly be thinking the worst. The newspaper has led the charge in fomenting worry over the gas emissions, with portentous, and remarkably similar, stories in 2008 and this week.
If you read geophysical journals and survey scientists tracking past and future methane emissions, you get an entirely different picture. …:
[T]he authors found that roughly 1 meter of the subsurface permafrost thawed in the past 25 years, adding to the 25 meters of already thawed soil. Forecasting the expected future permafrost thaw, the authors found that even under the most extreme climatic scenario tested this thawed soil growth will not exceed 10 meters by 2100 or 50 meters by the turn of the next millennium. The authors note that the bulk of the methane stores in the east Siberian shelf are trapped roughly 200 meters below the seafloor… [Read the rest.]
1. Russian election fraud analysis now in English; no matter the language, Putin disagrees
2. Using a natural experiment to find voter fraud in Japan (abstract; PDF)
3. And, not quite voter fraud, but: politicians who cut budget deficits don’t necessarily get booted out of office.
In a recent essay about NFL injuries for our “Football Freakonomics” series on NFL.com, I concluded:
If I were an NFL owner, GM, or coach, I’d set aside a little pot of money to try to answer some of these questions empirically. There is a lot of advantage to be gained by keeping even a few more players per season off the injured reserve list — to say nothing of the fact that it’s the right thing to do.
This prompted an interesting e-mail from Ryan Comeau:
Dynamic Athletics is a biomechanics company focused on athletes and people recovering from orthopedic injuries. Our technology has been in development for 8 years but we’ve only had our doors open for 7 months now. We process 3D motion-capture files in a way that deliver the full palate of kinematic & kinetic data (without force plates). This immense amount of data collected about an athlete’s ability to move & how exactly they produce their movement, if managed properly, becomes a valuable time capsule for the athlete or those managing a team.
Far fewer homes have been sold over the past five years than previously estimated, the National Association of Realtors said Tuesday.
That’s from a CNNMoney.com report by Blake Ellis.
While NAR hasn’t revealed exactly how big the revision to home sales will be, the agency’s chief economist Lawrence Yun said the decrease will be “meaningful.” …
Yun said the database NAR uses to track existing home sales, the Multiple Listing Service (MLS), has led the real estate agency to over-count existing home sales for several reasons.
The MLS database only includes home sales listed by realtors, and excludes homes listed by owners, providing a very narrow view of the market. And because more people are using realtors to list their homes instead of selling them independently, realtor-listed sales numbers have become artificially inflated, said Yun.
I cannot make sense of that last paragraph; can anyone else?
FWIW, back in 2007 we ran a Quorum on this blog asking the question “Is it time to believe in the housing bubble?” Lawrence Yun was one of the respondents:
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