Knowing and Making

From Freakonomics ... Economists estimate that the costs of reducing carbon emissions are likely to be upwards of $1 trillion per year....These cost estimates are obviously highly speculative, but the true cost of reducing carbon emissions is likely to be within two orders of magnitude of this number. Only two orders of magnitude? In other words, the costs will be somewhere between $10 billion and $100 trillion per year. That is, the same as the difference between a hundred and a million dollars; or dividing the cost out between everyone on the planet, choose between a $1.50 newspaper or a $15,000 car; or if the developed world pays for it all, you can either spend $10 on a glass of wine or give up your entire $100,000 annual salary. So: to prevent global warming by reducing carbon emissions, every human being will either have to work for an extra 15 minutes once a year, or give up their entire income FOREVER . Well, I'm glad we've got the scale of the issue clear...time ...

When Stephen Dubner announced a contest to guess the number of Google hits there would be for "SuperFreakonomics" on November 3, my thought process went something like this: There are about 11,000 results now. There are 1.3 million for "Freakonomics". As the SuperFreakonomics launch comes closer, it will be discussed more and more. But it is unlikely to get close to the total for Freakonomics - partly because many SuperFreakonomics pages will also have the word Freakonomics in them; partly because it's a sequel; partly because Freakonomics is a cultural phenomenon, surely beyond the original expectations, and the chances of Levitt and Dubner hitting two home runs in a row are low (nothing personal, guys, just stats). So somewhere in the 50,000-300,000 range is probably about right. I have no accurate way to predict where it will fall within that range But - just like The Price is Right - success in this contest does not correlate precisely with accuracy; inst...

Today I wasted 45 minutes on a contest to win a £9.99 book. Not rational at all - except for what I learned from the experience, and the satisfaction of feeling cleverer than 651 other contestants. Background information on the contest is here . In short, you need to guess how many Google hits there will be for SuperFreakonomics on November 3rd, two weeks after the eponymous book is published. This is the sequel to Freakonomics , so it should be popular. But how popular? Now this kind of contest has some interesting idiosyncrasies. Like guessing the price in The Price Is Right , or like guessing the weight of a nun - or whatever it is they do in travelling carnivals - your best strategy is not to try to accurately work out the weight. Instead, you should look at what other people have guessed and pick your number to maximise the chance that you'll be just a tiny bit closer than them. You might also recognise this strategy from the "beach vendor problem". In the simplest...

Over the last forty years, the American General Coolness Survey has asked subjects the following question: "Taken all together, how do you think you shape up these days? Would you say that you are: very cool, pretty cool, or not too cool?" In a new paper published today I demonstrate some dramatic results: coolness inequality has diminished hugely in the four decades covered by the survey. Simultaneously, overall coolness has increased substantially. In 1968, 5% of people reported themselves to be "very cool". A further 10% were "pretty cool" and 60% "not too cool" (a substantial proportion of respondents did not answer this question). By the 1970s, coolness had increased but so had inequality. 40% were very cool, 28% pretty cool and 30% not too cool. In the late 80s and early 90s, however, overall coolness fell and society became more equal - with a majority reporting themselves "not too cool" again. By the time of the 2008 survey, coo...