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Posts

April 23, 2012

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11:48 AM | Ted Williams, Diamonds and How to Wring an Extra $20 Out of a Used Car
Ted Williams entered the final two games of the 1941 season batting .39955. If he’d sat them out, the average would’ve been rounded up to .400, making him the only MLB player in the modern era to bat the milestone. Manager Joe Cronin told Williams the decision to play and risk it or simply sit [...]
Scientific American - Guest Blog
General Science

April 05, 2012

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10:59 AM | A Fun DIY Science Goodie: The Behavioral Economics of Agreement (And Why Negotiations Fail)
Why do people have such a hard time reaching a compromise? Blame fairness. That was the message of behavioral economist George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University when I interviewed him for my book, Brain Trust. In many types of negotiations, he says, “People aren’t trying to get the maximum payoff, they’re just trying to get [...]
Scientific American - Guest Blog
General Science

March 18, 2012

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3:56 PM | A Fun DIY Science Goodie: Proof Yourself Against Sensationalized Stats
For my book Brain Trust, I interviewed Keith Devlin, NPR’s “Math Guy,” a World Economic Forum fellow, and math professor at Stanford. And being a mathematician, Devlin thinks about things differently than the world at large. For example, in his very good monthly column Devlin’s Angle, he quotes the following problem, originally designed by puzzle [...]
Scientific American - Guest Blog
General Science

March 06, 2012

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12:57 PM | A Fun DIY Science Goodie: How To Get a Positive Expected Rate of Return on a Lottery Ticket
So goes popular opinion: the lottery’s an egregious societal evil implemented and overseen by shape-shifting, blood-drinking reptilian aliens. And that may be largely true – designed to slowly and quietly bleed dry your pockets – that is, unless you learn to drive it. Assuming drawings actually are random, all the science in the world can’t [...]
Scientific American - Guest Blog
General Science
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