When Freakonomics.com was launched in 2005, it was essentially a blog (c’mon, blogs were a thing then!). The first Freakonomics book had just been published, and Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt wanted to continue their conversation with readers. Over time, the blog grew to have millions of readers, a variety of regular and guest writers, and it was hosted by The New York Times, where Dubner and Levitt also published a monthly “Freakonomics” column. The authors later collected some of the best blog writing in a book called When to Rob a Bank … and 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants. (The publisher rejected their original title: We Were Only Trying to Help. The publisher had also rejected the title Freakonomics at first, so they weren’t surprised.) While the blog has not had any new writing in quite some time, the entire archive is still here for you to read.
Last week, we solicited your questions for Daniel Okrent, the author of Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition. He has answered your questions with gusto. Big thanks to Okrent and all of you for turning in another great Q&A.
Wired profiles Hunch, a company trying to master the art of online recommendations. Hunch participants respond to “Teach Hunch About You” questions, and their answers are fed into a master algorithm, which has already revealed some interesting correlations.
The economists Eric Gould and Todd Kaplan have used data to evaluate Jose Canseco’s claim that he taught many teammates to use steroids and growth hormones.
A souvenir store on Unter den Linden in Berlin offers 15 minutes of “free” internet usage. To log in, you go to the counter, get an entry code, and are free to use a PC. Moreover, you can use the code to get 10% off the purchase price of any souvenir in the shop. But unlike some “free” deals that come with tie-in purchases, this is a voluntary tie-in.
The recent deaths at the annual Love Parade music festival in Duisburg, Germany, can be counted among the most perplexing form of tragedy: one that unfolds entirely as a result of the normal psychology of healthy human beings. When crowds reach a critical density, they automatically become vulnerable to a contagion of blind fear that overwhelms any attempt at rational behavior. The paradox of terror is that the subconscious fear response, which evolved over millions of years to keep us safe, can itself pose a terrible danger in the 21st century.
If you want to know how people around the country are shopping, just ask the retailers and banks and credit card companies who collect reams of data on consumer buying patterns.
East St. Louis, faced with budget shortfalls, will lay off 30% of its police force (19 of its 62 officers) after negotiations with the union failed. City residents and police officers worry the move will lead to a significant increase in crime.
Zachary Meisel and Jesse Pines examine the issue of hospital “bouncebacks” — patients who return to the hospital shortly after discharge: “[B]ouncebacks are massively expensive-a recent study of Medicare patients found that one in five admissions results in a bounceback within 30 days of discharge, costing the federal government an estimated $17.4 billion per year.”
“[T]he best ‘poker face’ for bluffing may not be a neutral face, but rather a face that contains emotional correlates of trustworthiness.”
Fred Brooks, the computer scientist who 35 years ago wrote the still-relevant The Mythical-Man Month, has written a new book, The Design of Design, and Kevin Kelly interviews him in Wired.
A new report, based on the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy’s Individual Giving Model (IGM), estimates that individual charitable giving was down 4.9% percent in 2009.
A recent trip to Madrid included a lecture at the Universidad Europea de Madrid (which features, among other things, a dentistry school, at right). The best part was a short film that had been made before my arrival: a spoof in which an economics class at the university is taught freakonomics instead of economics (sorry, no translation available).
The origins of “If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
The BPS Research Digest reports that “[a] simple perceptual bias could influence football referees’ judgments about whether a foul occurred or not.”
In “Binge Drinking & Sex in High School” (abstract here; PDF here), Jeffrey S. DeSimone argues that “binge drinking significantly increases participation in sex, promiscuity, and the failure to use birth control, albeit by amounts considerably smaller than implied by merely conditioning on exogenous factors.”
One of my German colleagues has access to $30,000 for Gleichstellung-a German version of an EU-wide initiative to achieve equality between healthy white males and various “disadvantaged” groups, including women. Cleverly, the German government does not want people to substitute these moneys for other funds; as with any subsidy, there is a concern that people will spend it on activities they would have undertaken anyway.
A reader named Karisa Cloward, a school teacher, needs your help. Her dilemma calls to mind earlier blegs about roommates/rent and dividing up a loved one’s earthly goods.
Kathryn Schulz, the author of Being Wrong, has been guest-blogging for us about being wrong – and admitting our mistakes. Her latest post examines the historical culture of error in the United States.
In Hollywood, a lot of people make a good living by making TV pilots that never end up on the air. (There’s also a strong market for writing film scripts that are never turned into films.) According to Variety, roughly one-third of pilots end up on the air; here’s a primer about the process. With each pilot costing hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, that’s a lot of money spent so that a handful of TV executives can give something a thumbs-down and consign it to the trash.
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