Search the Site

Posts Tagged ‘Steve Landsburg’

Jury Poker: In Criminal Trials, the Odds Aren’t Good

A landmark study has been published by Northwestern statistics professor Bruce Spencer offering statistical and empirical data on the accuracy of U.S. jury verdicts. His method involved comparing the decision of a jury with the decision of the judge hearing the case, accomplished by having the judge fill out a questionnaire during jury deliberations. The data pool consisted of 290 . . .



The FREAKest Links: Be All That You Can Be Edition

Here’s a creative solution to the stall in Army recruitment: the military and senior defense officials are trying to get a bill through Congress that would allow recruitment of illegal aliens. The main attraction for the recruits, besides the steady job itself, would be the prize of citizenship. Picking up where Second Life leaves off, IBM has developed Innov8, a . . .



Question of the Day: What’s Up With Restaurant Wine Prices?

Yesterday, we posted a Q&A with economist and all-around smart guy Steve Landsburg, who addresses a lot of everyday riddles in his writing. Sometime in the next few days, we’ll be posting excerpts from the economist Robert Frank‘s new book The Economic Naturalist. So far, I am loving Frank’s book. It poses a series of questions about small, real-world riddles, . . .



More Sex Please, We’re Economists: A Q&A With Steve Landsburg

Steven Landsburg is not known for having temperate opinions. An economics professor at the University of Rochester and a prolific writer, Landsburg regularly raises provocative theories in his Slate column: women choke under pressure, e.g., or miserliness is a form of generosity. He is the author of the books Armchair Economist and Fair Play, which are in some ways direct . . .