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Posts Tagged ‘Contests’

A Dad-or-Daughter Songwriting Contest

My daughter, Anna, spent a bunch of time this past summer writing songs. One thing led to another and we ended up coauthoring a song together. I have more than 50 academic coauthors, but this is the first time I’ve ever tried writing music with someone.
Is it easy for people to tell the difference between songs she wrote by herself and a song where I wrote most of the lyrics? Is it possible for a 52-year-old lawyer/economist to emulate the lyrics of a 14-year-old Gleek? I think a lot of people would have a surprisingly hard time. But the question is testable.
So today I’m announcing a contest where you could earn a chance of winning an iTunes gift card worth somewhere between $50-$500. To play, just click through and listen to these three songs – Friend Zone, Longer, & Your Way, and then leave a comment to this post or as a YouTube comment to one of the three songs saying: i) which of the three songs you think I coauthored; ii) identifying a line in that song you believe I wrote; and iii) identifying a line in that song you believe Anna wrote. Here they are:


A Good Jobs-Policy Idea Could Be Worth $15,000

The Brooking Institution’s Hamilton Project has announced a competition to “identify new and innovative thinking about policies to create jobs in the United States and enhance productivity.” The contest winner will receive a $15,000 prize, while the runners-up will share $10,000.


Here's the Steelers-Packers Contest Answer

We ran a contest yesterday with a simple question: what do the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers have in common? There are many correct answers, but there was one in particular I was looking for. I was worried it might be hard, and I was ready to step in and give a clue. But I was wrong to be worried. The post went up at 10:30 a.m.; the first correct answer came in at 10:31 a.m., in the very first comment.


Contest: What Do the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers Have in Common?

I mean beside the fact they’re both playing in the Super Bowl this Sunday, or that they’ve both won a bunch of NFL championships, or that they’ve both reached the Super Bowl in recent years as a No. 6 seed. There may be lots of other commonalities I’m not thinking of, but whoever is first to give the answer I am thinking of will get his/her choice of Freakonomics swag, which now includes the just-released Freakonomics movie DVD and a movie poster.


The Latest in Freakonomics Swag

When we run a contest or quiz on this blog, we generally offer the winner/s some kind of prize. We’ve recently updated the old offerings. So here’s the current assortment. And remember: you can always get a free signed bookplate for either book any time you want. If you’re really feeling the spirit, you can even get some SuperFreakonomics pants, but you have to buy them yourself. (Sadly, they do nothing to stop you from walking home drunk.)


Algorithm Needed; $25,000 Reward

It’s not quite the Netflix Prize — which paid $1 million to whoever could improve that company’s Cinematch recommendation algorithm by 10 percent — but there’s a new competition designed to predict magazine sales at newsstands.


Recession Rock or Apocalypse Pop, and By Whom?

In recent months, we’ve posted a few examples of music written about the current recession. Now it’s time to see just how sharp you are with a pop-music quiz. This song is called “The Final Day”: Click Below to Listen Caution: it is very loud. The lyrics are nowhere near as straightforward as, say, “Hey Paul Krugman.” It might be . . .


Calling All Freakonometricians

| A challenge for our readers: the Fraser Institute is offering a $1,000 top prize for proposals on what economic or public policy issue it should try to measure. More information is here. Submit a brief essay or video with a clear thesis on what should be measured, why it should be measured, and how it might be measured. Let . . .


Freakonomics Contest Winners: What Economists Really Have in Common With Garbage

Blog readers did not get nearly as worked up about economists and garbage as they did about prostitutes and rice, at least as measured by hate mail. I received not a single piece of hate mail from an economist (although, in fairness, none of the hate mail I got on the prostitutes post was actually from a prostitute either). We . . .


There Once Was a Fund Guy Named Bernie …

A reader named Van Brenner wrote to let us know about an online dictionary in which every definition is written in the form of a limerick. One of our favorites is the following one on bear markets by Robert Holland: Gentle Ben this bear market is not, Especially for bulls who are caught Unawares by his raid On the profits . . .


An Economic Prediction That Actually Came True

Image: cambodia4kidsorg Economists are notorious for making bad predictions. There are endless examples, but the first one that comes to mind is a book written by economist Kevin Hassett and co-authors entitled Dow 36,000. The title was their prediction of where the Dow Jones Industrial Index should be based on fundamentals. The book came out in the year 2000 with . . .


The Monster Smash

We’ve been following James Altucher‘s continuing social experiment around the idea of ad-agency disintermediation — JungleSmash, a cash contest where people compete to make the best commercial for a product of James’s choosing. The submissions are in for the latest product: Monster Energy Drinks. It’s a little graphic, but “Garage Can-Opener Massacre” is definitely worth a watch — as are . . .


Got Six Words to Inspire America?

If Barack Obama‘s inaugural address could be just six words long, how would it read? Back in February, we ran a contest asking for a new six-word motto for the U.S. (The winner: “Our worst critics prefer to stay.”) We were riffing off of a then-new book, Not Quite What I Was Planning, which contained six-word memoirs by people from . . .


What Krugman Was Really Thinking

What was Paul Krugman thinking when he met President Bush last week? Here’s a list of over 300 photo captions from readers of this blog, and another couple hundred from Marginal Revolution here (with others here and Tyler Cowen‘s favorites here). Krugman, who graciously agreed to judge our Freako-versus-MR caption-that-photo contest, has spoken: Actually, I think it’s a tie — . . .


Dear Reader, Please Help Win Me Dinner

Yesterday, I asked Tyler Cowen if he’s willing to bet his Marginal Revolution readers against Freakonomics readers in the caption-that-photo contest we announced earlier this week. I’m pleased to report that Cowen is a betting man after all. Yes Tyler, your bet is accepted — and it’s dinner on the loser. I remain confident that the winning caption will be . . .


Scot Pollard: Great Three-Point Shooter and Honorary Freakonomist

Last week I posed what I thought would be a very hard question asking which player Roy Williams called the best 3-point shooter he had ever coached. I even did some Google searches to make sure that the answer wasn’t out there. I suppose I should have assumed that something that gets announced over the loudspeakers at a Celtics game . . .


The Growth of the Schwag Commentariat

In a recent post revealing the answer to our latest pop quiz, commenter “nemo” asked, “Do you have stats regarding the average [number] of comments per post versus the average number of comments per post that promises schwag?” Excellent question. Over the past few months, for typical posts (i.e., not including “FREAK-est Links” or other similar short posts), here is . . .


A Freakonomics Quiz for College Basketball Fanatics

Here is a hard quiz for you. Very hard. Even if you are both knowledgeable about college basketball and clever, I doubt you will answer this quiz correctly. It is a two part question: I heard Roy Williams speak recently. (1) Who did Williams describe as “the best 3-point shooter he ever coached?” (2) On what basis did he make . . .


And the New Six-Word Motto for the U.S. Is …

Last week, we asked for your vote to decide the best of the top five entries to our “6-word motto for the U.S.” contest. As promised, we tallied the votes received in the first 48 hours after posting. There was a clear winner: Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay (194 votes) Here are the runners-up: Caution! Experiment in Progress Since . . .


The Mustached Man Was …

We posted a pop quiz yesterday asking you to guess the identity of a mustached man on a long flight who read and snoozed before departing in his cashmere coat. My hat is off to the wisdom of the crowds. Even with these very thin clues, and even though it took quite a while — it was the 315th guess, . . .


Vote Now: A Six-Word Motto for the U.S.

We ran a contest recently asking you to come up with a new six-word motto for the U.S. Your response was quite strong, with more than 1,200 replies to date. Anyone looking for a good snapshot of public sentiment during this most interesting election year would do well to scroll through the comments: they are pretty damn illuminating, and not . . .


Contest: A Six-Word Motto for the U.S.?

Inspired by a recent trip to London, this recent Times article about England’s reluctant search for a national motto (suggestions range from “No Motto Please, We’re British” to “One Mighty Empire, Slightly Used”), as well as by this new book on six-word memoirs (which we teased not long ago here), I invite you all to attempt the following: Write a . . .


Contest: Write the Best Web Headline

There’s been some strange activity lately on this blog. It concerns a post that was written more than a year ago, on Dec. 8, 2006. In the three days after the post was published, it received 32 reader comments, which is pretty typical. Then the comments ceased. This, too, is typical: people generally no longer comment on a post that’s . . .


The Reports of Her Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Yesterday, I posted a quiz asking what my wife Jeannette’s grandma has in common with Mark Twain. The answer is that she, like Twain, had her obituary published while she was still alive. Jeannette’s grandma is named Anne Hathaway. At age 92, she is still going strong. Just a few years ago, she traveled from Orono, Maine to Slovenia for . . .


My Wife’s Grandma and Mark Twain: A Freakonomics Quiz

My last quiz on horse racing was hard: you needed to know some institutional details, and even if you did, it was still very tricky. This next quiz is quite easy. For a piece of Freakonomics schwag, just be the first one to correctly answer the following question: What do my wife Jeannette’s grandmother and Mark Twain have in common? . . .


The Answer to the Horse Betting Quiz

Among many ingenious ideas/scenarios/scams proposed by blog readers in response to my horse betting quiz, the answer I was looking for finally appeared. Jim Vanasek is the reader who nailed it. Here is what he wrote: The scenario: You are alive in going in to the final leg of the pick six. There is going to be a payout of . . .