Centives

Watch what you say; casual conversations have the potential to lead to enormous and incredible results, just ask Geert Jan Olsder. He was the man who wrote a paper called “Population Planning; a Distributed Time Optimal Control Problem” and according to Freakonomics, might have played a role in inspiring one very influential man in China to push for the nation’s infamous One-Child-Policy.

Here is a summary:

• Olsder met with Song Jian, a well educated fellow from China for some drinks
• They discuss the implications of population planning, without a second thought from Olsder
• Jian ultimately plays an instrumental role in developing China’s population control policy

Whether or not it was intended, Olsder looks to have served as a link in the story from theory of population control to actual, full-scale birth rate policy in China.

For the full story, check out the full article here.

Source: Freakonomics

A few unique auctions are currently taking place on EBay to raise money for The Adrienne Shelly Foundation, a organization that is dedicated to helping women pursue their goals in the movie industry. Wired wrote about the auctions, which include a few very rare opportunities such as:

• The chance for a walk-on role and meet and greet with the cast of Community
• (Essentially) Front row tickets to the Colbert Show
• Lunch with John Hamm from Mad Men
• A walk-on role in Joss Whedon’s upcoming film “In Your Eyes”

The price and nature of these auctions will preclude many from the experiences, but it is interesting to see how much people value these chances. If you want to read more about the auctions click here.

Source: Wired

Over the last few decades the cost of tuition at colleges across the country has increased shockingly quickly. In this article, NPR examines why the cost of higher education keeps going up at a rate that is difficult for many to match without assistance. Their statistics state that:

• Tuition at the University of California, Berkeley has jumped from 700 dollars in the 1970s to 15,000 per year currently
• The cost of tuition at private colleges has actually decreased over the last 10 years when accounting for inflation
• Public school costs are still rising at a faster rate than inflation

The article points to a few factors at play such as the fact that states are offering their colleges less assistance than in the past. To read more, click here.

Source: NPR

Some banks have been testing out a debit card fee which range from three to five dollars once a month, but these fees have not been well received. According to Time, several banks, including Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, and SunTrust have decided to ditch these fees or make them easier to circumvent because of the large, poor reaction from customers. The article states that the brouhaha began when Bank of America rolled out its five dollar fee for those customers without $20,000 in their account and the response been bad enough that some banks like SunTrust have even issued refunds to avoid backlash. It talks about a few major banks’ plans moving forward:

• Chase Bank will stop the $3 fee at the beginning of the month
• Wells Fargo cancelled plans to implement a fee as a test
• Bank of America is keeping the fee but offering customers more ways to avoid it

To read more about these monthly debit card fees and how they may affect you click here

Source: Time

Edit: According to the Associated Press, Bank of America has officially decided to end the five dollar fee today.

Source: Yahoo

An article from The Society Pages observed the change in murders between spouses over a recent 30 year span. From that data they were able to find that:

• The number of husbands killed by wives dropped by 75%
• The number of wives killed by husbands dropped by 25%
• The ratio between the two dropped from 82% to 28%

The author notes that the drop in husband on wife homicides dropped less than the overall decrease in any homicides, so that drop is likely not statistically significant. However, the “spousal rate of killing” ratio dropping as much as it has is something that should be examined. To read more about the author’s ideas on the topic click here.

Source: The Society Pages

According to Boston, over the next year many people in the United States will start paying a good deal less for prescription drugs. Patents on several of the most purchased drugs will be expiring soon; this means that patients will be able to buy chemically equivalent non-brand name medicine. Some of the figures from the article are:

• The average generic prescription cost $72 whereas the average brand name cost $198
• 15% of the population will be affected by these soon to expire patents
• In 2 years a brand name drug can lose 90% of it’s revenue to competition

The Freakonomics Blog examined a phenomenon in the NFL known as, “icing the kicker.” It is when a coach calls a timeout before the opposing teams kicker is going to attempt a crucial field goal. This is done because the perception is that during the extra time that the kicker has to wait, he will realize the pressure of the situation and it will cause him to forget about his fundamentals when he’s trying to make the kick again. Freakonomics set out to find whether or not it actually worked, and this is what they found:

• 76% of all field goals are made in the NFL
• On shorter kicks (kicks of under 50 yards) the accuracy was approximately the same if not a little higher for iced kickers
• On longer attempts (over 50 yards) kickers actually became more likely to succeed if they were iced

To watch their video about it, you can head here.

Source: Freakonomics

According to this article by the USA Today, the total amount of student loan debt is going to exceed one trillion dollars by the end of this year. Some of the things they point out in the article are:

•  Americans now owe more on their student loans then they do to their credit cards.
• The average college student is borrowing 63% more than ten years ago.
• The percentage of people defaulting on their student loans is increasing

To read more about the current and potential issues concerning student loans, click here.

Source: USA Today