Blog Entries

Of Tightwads and Spendthrifts

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Do you spend money a little too easily or does it hurt to spend at all? Do you wonder if you are the only one or if other people have the same problem too? Does your gender, age or income have anything to do with whether you are a tightwad or a spendthrift? What effect do marketing offers have on your tendency to hand over the cash, or for that matter, your credit card? Recent research shows that tightwads and spendthrifts do exist and are quite different in these behaviors.

Definition [...]

Images: Rings of Saturn

rsambandam@trchome.com — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Saturn is the only planet in our solar system to have extensive and beautiful rings. Have you wondered what they look like up close?

Wonder no more. For your viewing pleasure, NASA has sent the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft to Saturn and its moons to capture their many moods.

Behold.

Rings of Saturn

The Election: Who Got It Right?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 01:00:00 +0100

You can read my previous two election posts here and here. In this post I will take a look at who got the election right and what factors to look for in making that evaluation. Those factors include single polls versus (simple and complex) poll aggregations, use of combination forecasting, the use of cell phone only households in surveys and the astonishing performance of quantitative models that accurately predicted the final results almost a year back. Keep in mind that as of this writ [...]

School or Church: Can Where You Vote Impact How You Vote?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

It is election day and you do your civic duty by going to your designated polling place, standing in line, chatting with a couple of nice people, drawing the curtain and pulling the lever. Do you notice where you have voted? Of course, it's at your local school (or church or firehouse). Did that have any influence on how you voted? Of course not, right? Not so fast. New research (by Jonah Berger, Marc Meredith and Christian Wheeler) indicates that the type of polling place can have a subt [...]

Jeopardy! Explains Gender Differences

rsambandam@trchome.com — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

OK, so Jeopardy! cannot possibly explain all the differences between the genders, but it helps quite a bit in understanding financial risk taking because of its unique format. Researchers studying gender differences in risk taking have known that men and women are different in several ways. For example, in general men are more willing to take risks, single women allocate less wealth to risky assets compared to single men, women have lower risk tolerance on health and retirement issues, women [...]

Does the Bradley Effect Exist?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

The Bradley Effect is quite often mentioned in the media as we approach the Presidential election. It refers to the under-performance of a black candidate as compared to poll numbers. A good summary of various issues can be found here. A lot of the information about this effect is speculative or based on sparse polling numbers from other races which have led to questions of whether the effect really existed, whether it was seen in other races and whether in 2008 it is still likely to be seen. [...]

Obama or McCain? Part II

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

To read the first part of this post click here. In that we discussed how to use the available information to predict a winner in the current presidential race. While the polls (including the poll average) gave a small edge to McCain at that time, the other measures gave a mixed picture with the combined measure giving Obama a slight edge. Since that post a month ago the race has changed quite a bit. In this post I will revisit those numbers to see where they stand, how they have changed and w [...]

Books: Against the Gods

rsambandam@trchome.com — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein

Given what has been happening in the economy recently, this book (written ten years ago) provides an excellent foundation for understanding how we ended up here. In telling the story of risk, Bernstein focuses on how much people believe the past determines the future. The more we believe we understand the past, the more certain we are of what will happen in the future. Quantifying the past helps enormously in bringing [...]

Video: Emergency Eyeglasses

rsambandam@trchome.com — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 01:00:00 +0100

You wear eye glasses and have misplaced them and can't see anything. What do you do? The science educator Robert Krampf is coming to your aid with a simple solution.

Emergency eyeglasses

For more videos on simple science experiments check out his website.

Can Money Buy Happiness?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

This question has been asked for millennia and before any research was done there were three possible answers: yes, no, maybe so. After some research was done in the 70's, we had what was called as the Easterlin paradox which seemed to show that money and happiness were not related. More recent research from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with data from many countries around the globe seems to indicate that people with more money are, in fact, happier.

< [...]

Insighter: Richard Feynman

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Richard Feynman was one of the pre-eminent physicists of the 20th century. The leader of the Manhattan Project, Robert Oppenheimer, had described him as the most brilliant young physicist, even among the elite group that came together to work on the bomb. While his primary contribution was to help physicists understand and think about physics in a new way, he also had several other noteworthy contributions such as pioneering the thinking on superconductivity and nanotechnology. Ultimatel [...]

Obama or McCain - who will win?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

A question that is of great interest now and the common response tends to be "who's leading in the polls?". You often hear people say that the latest poll from some reputable organization shows one candidate with a 3 point lead. Is that the best measure we have of predicting who will win the Presidential election? I submit that it is not and will walk you through the different measures available and what is most likely the best one. I say most likely because nothing predicts the [...]

Babyface CEOs - Good or Bad?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Do you form judgments of others based on how they look? Very likely. These judgments are not just about commonly understood features such as skin color, but also about more subtle ones like the shape of a person's face. Research has shown that babyfaced people are seen as kinder, warmer and physically weaker than maturefaced people, as well as more honest and naive. Given this, are there consequences for a company that has a babyface CEO (or spokesperson) in a time of crisis? Will the sha [...]

Video: Susan Polgar

rsambandam@trchome.com — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Susan Polgar is a chess pioneer as the first female chess Grandmaster in the world. Born in Hungary, she and her sisters have been a force in the world of chess for more than two decades.

Less known is that her father was a psychologist who believed that genius could be developed, and used his children in a real life experiment to prove that. This National Geographic video shows how her brain works.

My brilliant brain.

Death of the 0.400 Hitter

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Why aren't there any more 0.400 hitters in baseball? The eminent evolutionary biologist and baseball fan Stephen Jay Gould answers this great sporting puzzle in his book, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, which is only partly about baseball. It is really about understanding basic statistics and along the way you get a great discourse on the animal world and in particular bacteria. He uses these examples, and a terrifying intellect, to argue that just looking at [...]

More or Less?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Let's say you are a cell phone manufacturer and you have to make a decision about a new phone. Your clever engineers have developed several new features that could make your phone much more distinctive in the market. What do you do? Do you put as many features as you can into one phone, or do you introduce several phones, each with a different set of features? Researchers at the University of Maryland asked this question and conducted a series of experiments to answer it. Surprisingly, [...]

Video: The Stand-Up Economist

rsambandam@trchome.com — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Yoram Bauman is a micro-economist who calls himself the world's first and only stand-up economist*. This is his take on an economics text book.

The Ten Principles of Economics

Other, more colorful, routines can be found on You Tube by simply searching for Yoram Bauman.

*This claim is disputed by several others, as posted on his website.

Books: In Defense of Food

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto by Michael Pollan

To be clear, Michael Pollan is not a food scientist, nutritionist, physician or a government employee. He is a journalist with a long interest in food and its impact on society. Consequently this book does not contain a specific diet nor does it focus on combating a particular condition such as weight loss. What it is, oddly enough, is what it says it is - a defense of food. It might seem strange that someone would need to write a [...]

What's in a Name (or Initial)?

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Do names have an impact on performance? How about initials? Would major league baseball players with the initial K strikeout more than others? Would people with intials C or D perform worse in class? Are people with white or black sounding names likely to be more or less successful in life? Interesting research has been done in both the areas of initials and names and the results are seemingly contradictory.

The research on initials (Nelson and Simmons) relies on a previously demon [...]

Insighter: Dallas Abbott

rsambandam@trchome.com — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 01:00:00 +0100

Asteroids are space objects and sometimes they hit earth. Depending on their size they can cause great damage. Small asteroids can burn up when they enter the atmosphere. Larger ones can hit earth and cause damage directly and indirectly. The most popular reason for the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago is asteroid strikes and the resulting global climactic changes. Okay, nothing new so far. Everyone can agree that asteroid strikes can have no to devastating impact. The ne [...]