Undergraduate majors – Business is a BUY, the Humanities are a SELL:
ile the study of English has become less popular among undergraduates, the study of business has risen to become the most popular major in the nation’s colleges and universities. With more than twice the majors of any other course of study, business has become the concentration of more than one in five American undergraduates. Here is how the numbers have changed from 1970/71 to 2003/04 (the last academic year with available figures): English: from 7.6 percent of the majors to…
1 min read
Statistics and effective decision making in football:
light of my recent post on the difficulty of changing our decision-making habits - even when we're aware that our habits are biased and flawed - I thought it might be interesting to look at two examples from professional football. Why sports? Given the intense competitive pressure in the NFL - there's a thin line between victory and ignominy - you'd expect head coaches to have corrected many of their decision-making mistakes, especially once those mistakes have been empirically…
4 minutes
TED TALKS: Rory Sutherland – Life lessons from an ad man
in over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
1 min read
Ingenious Secret Code:
itten by a frustrated Lt. General Sir Henry Clinton during the Revolutionary War in 1777, this beautifully crafted Masked Letter is a perfect example of early coded correspondence. The letter reads perfectly well on its own, however only when you place a mask over the paper does the true meaning appear. Incredibly clever, and surprisingly successful as both the letter and mask were sent to the recipient (in this case John Burgoyne) along different routes. Below is the original letter,…
2 minutes
A blog which tracks unfortunate acronyms, such as Department on Aging:
fortunateacronyms.com Click through to check them out. Hat tip: Marginal Revolution/Andrew Sullivan Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
1 min read
NYTimes.com – Is backward time travel sabotaging the Hadron collider?
re than a year after an explosion of sparks, soot and frigid helium shut it down, the world’s biggest and most expensive physics experiment, known as the Large Hadron Collider, is poised to start up again. In December, if all goes well, protons will start smashing together in an underground racetrack outside Geneva in a search for forces and particles that reigned during the first trillionth of a second of the Big Bang. Then it will be time to test…
1 min read
THE ONION: Majority Of Newspapers Now Purchased By Kidnappers To Prove Date
olding a laptop next to a kid's head while blood is streaming from his nose just isn't the same," said the source, adding that printed materials remove any uncertainty about dates being altered with Photoshop or other digital manipulation software. "There's just something about the feel of newsprint and the smell of ink coupled with the mildew odor of a windowless basement that can't be replaced. Ultimately, I think newspapers make the whole thing more tangible and concrete for everyone…
1 min read
Making the mundane fun – “Piano stairs” (Video):
a youtube.com Hat tip: Marginal Revolution. Join over 320,000 readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: New Neuroscience Reveals 4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Be More Successful How To Get People To Like You: 7 Ways From An FBI Behavior Expert
1 min read
