How do the reviews critics offer differ from the popular opinion of Amazon review scores written by individuals? One study sought to find out and Alison Flood reported on the results:

• In aggregate, professional viewers and Amazon reviews agreed about the quality of a book.
• This is despite the fact that there is no quality assurance in Amazon reviews and that they can easily be gamed.
• In fact, at times it appears that Amazon reviews are better evaluators of quality. Professional reviewers are more likely to give prizewinning authors or those with a lot of media attention better reviews.
• Amazon reviews are also good at identifying good books written by authors that aren’t well known.
• Media outlets are also more likely to review, and give better reviews to books written by their own journalists.

To read details of how the study was conducted, what one expert reviewer thinks it takes to be a good reviewer, and some other conclusions from the study, click here.

Source: The Guardian

Via: Marginal Revolution

Timothy Taylor writes that “the U.S. spends more than 50% more per person on health care than the next highest countries…and more than double per person what many other countries spend.” Yet the reasons for high spending without a corresponding increase in life expectancy aren’t what most people would assume:

• While America does have an obesity crisis it also has a younger population with low rates of smoking. So it is not the case that Americans are less healthier than others.
• The US also does not have more doctors or hospital beds per person than other rich, developed countries.
• While the US does buy brand-name drugs instead of generic drugs, the amount that could be saved from the move to generic drugs would only be about 2-3% of total healthcare costs.

So what does explain the high spending? High prices for hospital stays and high administrative costs. To read more about why these costs are so high, as well as other factors do and don’t contribute to the problem of high healthcare spending, and some scattered analysis of how American healthcare compares to that of other countries, click here.

Source: Conversable Economist

Katy June Friesen had the opportunity to interview Jeffrey M. Pilcher, an expert on Mexican food. In this interview they discussed the origins of the taco and some highlights include:

• One theory suggests that the word ‘taco’ has its origins in the dynamite (paper covered gunpowder) used in Mexican silver mines.
• Tacos are a relatively modern invention that can be traced back to the 1700s.
• Tacos were first mentioned in the United States in 1905, at a time when Mexicans began to migrate to the United States.
• They were seen as lower class food until the children of the original Mexican migrants began to advance economically.
• What is widely considered a standard taco today is really an amalgam of American and Mexican cuisine. Hamburger meat, cheddar cheese, iceberg lettuce and tomatoes are all signs of American influences.
• Hard shell tacos did not become mainstream until around the 1940s.

To read more about Lebanese-Mexican tacos, why tacos are like doughnuts, why Taco Bell has been unsuccessful in Mexico, the role that sexualization has played in the adoption of the taco, and why eating a taco was described as “biting a serpent” read the full interview here.

Source: Smithsonian

Via: Kottke

Nick Berry who formerly worked in Microsoft’s Casual Game division (the people behind the Xbox) used mathematics to come up with a strategy that can increase your likelihood of victory in the board game, Battleship. Highlights of Aisha Harris’s report on Berry’s strategies include:

• If you pick random squares on the board to target your opponent’s ships then on average it will take you 66 moves to sink your opponent’s battleship.
• You can reduce this to 65 by using a Hunt mode. In this mode you keep in mind that any ship has to occupy at least two squares. Therefore you should only target half the squares to find the ship.
• The real secret though allows you to drop it to 44 moves. This method requires an understanding of probability distributions and while you need a sophisticated computer to calculate all of the probabilities perfectly you can engage in a little bit of it yourself. If, for example, you’re looking for the aircraft carrier – the largest ship on the board – you know that it can’t exist on any stretches of ocean with less than five squares. Therefore you should target areas with the greatest probability of hiding a five slot ship.

To read more about Harris’s attempt to utilize these differing strategies, how Berry came up with these strategies, and the random nature of the game, click here.

Source: Slate

James Melik reviewed some of the history behind Switzerland’s most iconic product. Highlights include:

• The Swiss Army Knife was first patented over a hundred years ago in 1897.
• The company behind the knife makes 35,000 each day.
• In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks pocket knives were banned from airplanes. This caused sales of Swiss Army Knives to plummet by 30%.
• To deal with this the company released a ‘flight version’ of their product – it features no blades but has all the other functions.
• More recent innovations include an army knife with a USB stick.

To read more about the countries that the company currently supplies, how they feel about the Chinese market, how the company, Victorinox, got its name, and why they have never made a worker redundant for financial reasons, click here.

Source: BBC

If the product you’re using is free, the old adage goes, then you are the product. The BBC reports that Facebook has set its share price at $38 per share. Why would investors be willing to pay so much for it? Because it is by far the largest social network – there are 901 million users which make Facebook a high value product. CNN reports that if all of Facebook’s employees and executives exercise their share options then there will be about 2.8 billion shares of Facebook. At $38 each this means that Facebook will have a total worth of 106,400,000,000 – One hundred six billion and four hundred million.

Divide that among the users and your Facebook profile is worth $118.09. Tragically, we’re told that our banal stories about our pets are still worth nothing.