The Myth of the Secret Genius
If he’s super rich, he must be a super genius. That conclusion is a cognitive mistake many continue to make when they encounter a seemingly incongruous state of affairs, such as Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, behaving like an irrational idiot. And yet, behave like an idiot he does, day after day, a public jester who…
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Monty Hall and “the Leibniz Illusion”
Throughout the history of mathematics, quite a few mathematical problems have achieved celebrity status outside the circle of mathematicians. Famous problems such as squaring the circle or proving Fermat’s last theorem have intrigued thousands of people over the centuries. But almost no mathematical problem has been as fiercely and widely debated as the Monty Hall…
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David Walsh: 8 Lessons on Punting and Life From The Billion-Dollar Bettor
David Walsh and Zeljko Ranogajec rose from humble Hobart university students to become two of the most successful professional gamblers in history. Their betting syndicate turns over literally billions of dollars each year and is recognised as one of the world’s biggest gambling operations. Both David Walsh and Zeljko Ranogajec are private individuals who rarely…
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Investment Bubbles and Frauds Have a Lot in Common
Expensive investor mistakes come in two forms. We can either lose money slowly or quickly. Slow losses are small and compound over time – largely unnoticed – growing into a major cost; these can be through high fees or persistent performance chasing. Rapid losses are far more dramatic and are often a result of us…
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Inside the Elite, Underpaid, and Weird World of Crossword Writers
The conspiracy theory writes itself. Start looking, and you’ll notice how many New York Times crossword puzzles are co-constructed (the preferred term for what most people would refer to as co-written) by a professional crossword constructor and someone with a day job—it’s hard not to see all the artists, web developers, professors, and other titles that imply…
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