Promising drugs keep failing in trials. Allegations of fraud have cast a shadow over the field. An expert explains why Alzheimer’s treatments have been so hard to find — and…
…Are they efficient? Intrade versus a pundit like Dick Morris is no contest. I hope 538 is competitive with or better than Intrade. I’m a fan of information aggregators and…
Then today is your lucky day. Here’s a request we received from friends at a TV production company: We’re casting the first season of Enter the Wild, an inspiring documentary…
…conjecture because my quick internet search did not turn up the data to do it — is that if you plot those few points on the graph and compute the…
…coupled with low interest rates, has pushed investors toward riskier investments. The commodity market has been one outlet for that reinvigorated search for yield. Investment flows into commodity-related vehicles has…
…and sellers. Sellers have to keep going back to the market in search of new buyers, and thus have to worry about their reputations. For buyers, not so much. It’s…
…expertise and expert performance; like the best research in this field, it teaches us general lessons about how one reaches high performance in almost any domain, whether music, chess, poker,…
In the wake of some of the latest chatter about The Wine Trials 2010 (this one from Joe Briand, wine buyer for New Orleans’s excellent Link Restaurant Group, e.g. Cochon,…
They’re paid a fortune — but for what, exactly? What makes a good C.E.O. — and how can you even tell? Is “leadership science” a real thing — or just…
…competitors. Not only did these companies make the transition from good to great, but they also had the sorts of characteristics which made them “built to last” (which is the…
(Photo: Keith Allison) We’ve blogged before about the (relatively small) effect of birth month on athletic excellence. But how does birth location affect a potential athlete? In The New York…
…TED community then helps to bring into reality. Brilliant’s plan, described in this TED video, is to devise a system that will crawl the internet looking for early clues that…
…teaching and his research/publication luster; and students are worse off too. Is this really a Pareto deterioration—a new economic phrase denoting a change in which at least one person is…
…this Google Blog Search: SOPRANOS FINALE WTF. Scroll down to the page that contains entries from the minutes after the show aired. If the Smithsonian or anyone else ever wants…
Photo: HBO We feature all kinds of people on this blog – drug dealers, prostitutes, even academic economists – but readers are always complaining that we don’t have any movie…
…Literacy (NAAL), which measures the English literacy of adults across the United States. Prose literacy, defined in the study as the ability to “search, comprehend, and use information from continuous…
…other state? Texas is America’s fastest-growing large state, with three of the top five fastest-growing cities in the country: Austin, Dallas and Houston. In 2012 alone, total migration to Texas…
…It takes you to the BLS page where they plot the latest data, but without the seasonal wiggles. Yes, Google does offer a disclaimer with its data. But a better…
…but beyond anecdotal research: I’ve called hundreds of women for executive roles in carrying out searches for our clients. They simply say “No thanks.” Perhaps they are a single parent…
The N.B.A. superstar Chris Bosh was still competing at the highest level when a blood clot abruptly ended his career. In his new book, Letters to a Young Athlete, Bosh…
…on which economist will be the next Chairman of the Federal Reserve. (At Tradesports, go to the trading screen and search under “Current Events – Federal Reserve.” Consistent with the…
…searchable online database of “odds statements,” the probabilities of everyday life. You can search it by keyword or by the odds themselves — for instance, how many things stand a…
Recorded live in San Francisco. Guests include the keeper of a 10,000-year clock, the co-founder of Lyft, a pioneer in male birth control, a specialist in water security, and a…
…a horse. This got me to thinking: how dangerous is horseback riding, especially as compared to, say, riding a motorcycle? A quick Google search turns up this 1990 CDC report,…
…the mainstream press. It is true that the story didn’t make it into the Times, and the results of a Google News search are pretty light. You could argue that…
…economic impacts, and the freak’s point of view. I live in New York. When hurricane Sandy came along the top-of-the-list item my friends with children hoarded was milk. They gave…
…difficult places and tackle the toughest challenges. I would recommend that you focus where the need is greatest — Zimbabwe — and where your work will have the greatest impact….
Tim Davis, an artist who teaches at Bard College in upstate New York, wanted to sculpt a life-size self-portrait out of album covers of Bob Dylan’s Self Portrait. But he’s…
…great schools: way to go, H. and L.!) Those seniors will soon start a new life. What’s in store for them? Freakonomics contributor Nicole Tourtelot put a few questions —…
If you can make it through three years of law school, you too might end up on a billboard. Zachary Crockett makes the case.
