When to Rob a Bank: ...And 131 More Warped Suggestions and Well-Intended Rants

by Steven D. Levitt

Humans tend to overestimate small probabilities, so the fear generated by an act of terrorism is greatly disproportionate to the actual risk.

What does tenure do? It distorts people’s effort so that they face strong incentives early in their career (and presumably work very hard early on as a consequence) and very weak incentives forever after (and presumably work much less hard on average as a consequence).

“I don’t expect perfection, I expect excellence.” I expect 100 percent effort in all you do.

Our Worst Critics Prefer to Stay

As we’ve written before, most people are terrible at risk assessment. They tend to overstate the risk of dramatic and unlikely events at the expense of more common and boring (if equally devastating) events.

So if these popular explanations don’t have much explanatory power for home-field advantage, what does? In a word: the refs.

Monday Night Football is the only TV show that historically has been among the top ten in viewership for both blacks and whites. Seinfeld, one of the most popular white shows ever, was never in the top fifty for blacks.

if you are trying to solicit donations door to door, the single best thing you can do to get large donations is to be an attractive blond woman

In fact, fewer people today are getting married, but the ones who do are more likely to stay together.