Sunday, October 30, 2011

Are Men Funnier Than Women?

Nope:
Scientists had 16 male and 16 female subjects write funny captions for 20 New Yorker magazine cartoons in 45 minutes. Then the captions were rated by a different group of 34 male and 47 female subjects. Men’s captions rated higher on average than women’s captions. But only by a mere 0.11 points out of perfect score of 5.0.
Unless you count this:
Maybe men just make more attempts at humor. For example, fewer women win the New Yorker caption contests, but fewer enter. When women do enter, however, they tend to win with fewer attempts compared to men.
Did I mention I teach comedy classes? Men and women accepted of course.

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Worthwhle Sentences on Complexity

From F.A. Hayk: “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design”

From Hugh Hollowell: "rules are what we use when we don’t want to take the time to discover the specifics of the given situation."

From Shadi Hamid: "The true test of being anti-torture is opposing it even when it works"

From Jonah Lehrer: "We are affiliation machines, editing the world to confirm our partisan ideologies."

From Conan O'Brien: “There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized”

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Emptying the Bottle: Mid-October '11 Links

Here is a list of the worthwhile links I've Bookmarked recently:
As always, feel free to email me anything interesting you come across.

Wednesday, October 05, 2011

Frank Deford on the Economics of Minor College Sports

Even though I'm not the biggest sports fan, I must confess I've been listening to sport commentary. But before you get surprised, it's from NPR. For the past few months Frank Deford has been enlightening me to the drama that is organized sports. This week is no exception. Listen here as he takes on the complicated relationship of college academics and college sports.

Monday, October 03, 2011

Multiple Choice Question Paradox

From The American Pageant textbook: