Quotes Uncovered: Beer or Wine as Proof?
I’m back to inviting readers to submit quotations whose origins they want me to try to trace, using my book, The Yale Book of Quotations, and my more recent researches. Read More »
A Prediction Market Trading Pit for the Digital Age: A Guest Post From David Pennock
David Pennock is one of the smartest guys I know. As a scientist at Yahoo! Research, he’s on the bleeding edge of computer scientists working at the interface with economics. His latest project, called Predictalot, is an amazing new prediction market which allows people to trade on the millions of possible outcomes of the Sweet Sixteen. It’s a brilliant example of just why economists are going to have to get cozy with computer scientists. And David has generously agreed to provide a guest post describing what he’s up to. (And if you want more, he writes the always-interesting Oddhead Blog). Read More »
Tiger Woods Kicked Out of Principles of Economics
The newest version of the widely used Principles of Economics textbook will run without a Tiger Woods reference: “Previous editions of the textbook used an example entitled, ‘Should Tiger Woods Mow His Own Lawn?’ The sixth edition of the book replaced the previous example with one featuring quarterback Tom Brady…” Read More »
Freakonomics Radio: Death by Fire? Probably Not
As you can see from the graphic above (which comes from the illustrated edition of SuperFreakonomics), fire deaths in the U.S. have fallen 90 percent over the past 100 years, a great and greatly underappreciated gain. How did it happen — and could we ever get to zero? Those are some of the questions we ask in the latest Freakonomics Radio podcast, “Death By Fire? Probably Not.” Read More »
and 
. If you haven’t seen it yet, the movie features Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner, and was made by a dream team of documentary directors. Paste Magazine named it one of the 