Get Out of P.O.W. Camp Free?
A few weeks back we linked to a blog post describing the optimal strategy in the game Monopoly. This fascinating article by Brian McMahon describes how the game of Monopoly…
A few weeks back we linked to a blog post describing the optimal strategy in the game Monopoly. This fascinating article by Brian McMahon describes how the game of Monopoly…
It facilitates crime, bribery, and tax evasion – and yet some governments (including ours) are printing more cash than ever. Other countries, meanwhile, are ditching cash entirely. And if Star…
SuperFreakonomics comes out in paperback in the U.S. tomorrow. It includes a 16-page color insert with material from the Illustrated Edition of the book. Here’s an example, detailing the clever…
…shopping. The service, a Firefox add-on, notifies users if a product is available for less elsewhere, eliminating the need for price-comparison websites. The invisible hand never worked so quickly. [%comments]…
…1. It had good Wi-Fi and lots of comfortable tables and chairs to sit with a computer. (This was important to me since I was actually on a reporting trip,…
The U.S. president is often called the “leader of the free world.” But if you ask an economist or a Constitutional scholar how much the occupant of the Oval Office…
…wants to get sent to jail to get his three square meals. The judge obliged, giving him a three-year sentence. It’s too bad this news didn’t break until he’d already…
The bad news: roughly 70 percent of Americans are financially illiterate. The good news: all the important stuff can fit on one index card. Here’s how to become your own…
…fees.” Considering the enormous benefits of investments in bicycle infrastructure, can even a tax-hating bicyclist concede his point, at a registration cost of just over 7 cents a day? [%comments]…
…than stenographers to power. However, tenure cannot protect academic freedom if the freedom is not exercised. I therefore propose the following test for the academic-freedom benefit of tenure: the prevalence…
…no free money. I thought this was the greatest scam going— getting paid for watching sports — this Weight Watchers thing is a bigger scam. http://youtu.be/aCB3MyJ94Ns The video caused a…
It is ironic that the people who least need gifts are the ones most likely to have gifts lavished upon them. The goodie bags at the Oscars are legendary. I…
The prisoner’s dilemma is a classic game-theory problem. Robert, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, has spent his career studying it — and the ways humans can cooperate,…
…pollution, carbon emissions, congestion, accidents — and how one new strategy may be able to help: pay-as-you-drive (P.A.Y.D.) auto insurance. The strange truth is that most auto insurance in the…
…skeptical. But I am also happy to be proven wrong. So please let us know via the poll below, and also write in answers in the comments. Thanks. [poll id=”25″]…
…and meat printers). Now NASA is funding an Austin, Tex., company that is working on a pizza printer. From CNET: Systems and Materials Research recently received a $125,000 grant from…
The U.N.’s World Happiness Report — created to curtail our unhealthy obsession with G.D.P. — is dominated every year by the Nordic countries. We head to Denmark to learn the…
…move. The genre community is close-knit, with a huge on-line presence, and with publishers, authors and fans having closer communication than perhaps some other areas of publishing do. Having been…
There are more than twice as many suicides as murders in the U.S., but suicide attracts far less scrutiny. Freakonomics Radio digs through the numbers and finds all kinds of…
…fast; immediately after a 2,000-calorie meal; and one hour after the meal. The immediate effect of the meal was neutralizing: the more risk-averse men were less cautious when playing immediately…
We worship the tradition of handing off a family business to the next generation. But is that really such a good idea?
There are more than twice as many suicides as murders in the U.S., but suicide attracts far less scrutiny. Freakonomics Radio digs through the numbers and finds all kinds of…
We worship the tradition of handing off a family business to the next generation. But is that really such a good idea?
They — along with a great many other high-achieving women — were all once Girl Scouts. So was Sylvia Acevedo. Raised in a poor, immigrant family, she was told that…
The gist: we spend billions on end-of-life healthcare that doesn’t do much good. So what if a patient could forego the standard treatment and get a cash rebate instead?
Standing in line represents a particularly sloppy — and frustrating — way for supply and demand to meet. Why haven’t we found a better way to get what we want?…
We spend billions on end-of-life healthcare that doesn’t do much good. So what if a patient could forego the standard treatment and get a cash rebate instead?
Step 1: Hire a Harvard psych professor as the pitchman. Step 2: Have him help write the script …
There are more than twice as many suicides as murders in the U.S., but suicide attracts far less scrutiny. Freakonomics Radio digs through the numbers and finds all kinds of…
Adam Smith famously argued that specialization is the key to prosperity. In the N.F.L., the long snapper is proof of that argument. Just in time for the Super Bowl, here’s…
