Author: 2010

• Intelligence and wage – a positively skewed hump?

  

  Labour economists devote much of their time to looking at what factors affect wages. The classic regressions they run show that you are likely to [...]

   

• Guitar exercise: Secrets by Symphony X

  

  It’s nice when you know a short riff that can help you improve multiple aspects of your guitar technique at the same time. It’s even [...]

   

• Pupillary Protest

  

  ‘Pupillary Distance’ is an ophthalmic term. It means, quite simply, the distance between your pupils. If you wear glasses, then you may remember the optician [...]

   
 

• The Groin Strike Dilemma

  

  Back when the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) was in its infancy, there were very few rules. Ex-presidential candidate John McCain actually described it as the [...]

   

• Are ‘sunk costs’ really sunk?

  

  What are ‘sunk costs’? ‘Sunk cost’ is a term commonly used in economics. It refers to a cost that you or a firm might incur [...]

   

• World Cup prediction results (and some statistics)

  

  Well, the World Cup has been and gone. Enthralling as always, this time the tournament proved to be more of a tactical battle. Although I [...]

   
 

• How many games are there in a tournament?

  

  In keeping with the football spirit, I’m going to use the format of the FIFA World Cup as an example to show you how to [...]

   

• 5 alternative World Cup predictions

  

  It’s less than a week to go until the start of the 2010 FIFA Football World Cup – the second biggest sporting event in the [...]

   

• Mouse activity

  

  I discovered a neat bit of software last week. It’s called IOGraph and you can download it here for Windows, OSX or Linux. If you [...]

   
 

• Who should you vote for? Download my Election Model!

  

  I’m sure you know that next Thursday, the UK is going to have a general election. And I’m also pretty sure that you’re sick of [...]

   

• Daniel Kahneman, Loss Aversion and a video

  

  Out of all of the various areas and branches of economics, none has captured my interest more than ‘behavioural economics’. This studies the links between [...]

   

• Dutch Auction Shops

  

  Japan have been struggling for some time with poor aggregate demand in their economy. The interest rate has been near zero (and actually zero at [...]

   
 

• iPad = iPointless

  

  On 27th January of this year, Apple’s jean-clad messiah Steve Jobs unveiled Apple’s new tablet-like device – the iPad. It was probably the most unsurprising [...]

   

• Cost Curves and a Nice Proof

  

  As I like to do before getting down to some hardcore maths, I’m going to take an artistic break and present to you a Haiku [...]