Over the course of his lifetime, the self-proclaimed fortune teller Nostradamus published more than six thousand different predictions. With the benefit of hindsight, it is easy to see that there was little substance or predictive value in all of those prophecies. In fact, in his day, even the [...]
In the field of epidemiology, researchers have long used the term “tipping point” to describe how epidemics occur: At first, an ordinary disease moves slowly, not gaining much attention. But then, at a certain point, seemingly overnight, it snowballs into something much larger. Within the world of [...]
In her bestselling book, Thinking in Bets, retired poker champion Annie Duke stresses an important point: As kids in school, it was regarded as a failure if we ever answered a question “I don't know.” But, in the world outside the classroom, the only honest answer to many questions is, in fact, “I [...]
In the spring of 2000, University of California professor Terry Odean published a research paper on the topic of investor behavior. The results weren't pretty. On average, by Odean's reckoning, individual investors lagged the overall market by nearly four percentage points per year. The culprit: the [...]
I love the questions kids ask. This week my first-grader told me that he had heard the word "caricature" and wanted to know what it meant. I explained it, and then we went online to see some examples. In our highly politicized culture, we didn't have to look far to see some exaggerated cartoon [...]
