While attending the International Society for Humor Studies conference last week, I had a chance to meet Gil Greengross of the University of New Mexico. He is an an evolutionary psychologist and anthropologist, and I asked him the question: How can evolution help us understand humor? His answer is a an interesting one. Importantly, he […]
I am at Boston University, attending the International Society for Humor Studies (ISHS) annual conference. ISHS is an interdisciplinary group — psychologists, linguists, historians and many others — who are interested in the study of humor. Having never been to the conference before, I am eager to sample the wide range of talks being offered. […]
This week, Decision Science News’ Dan Goldstein travels to Boulder, and we team up for a joint post (over grilled steak). — Enjoy Most people are happy to have a few types of insurance coverage, typically home, health, and life insurance. However, you can insure most anything. A few of the more peculiar insurance products […]
How have you had friends or family meet a Hollywood actor and marvel at how short he is in real life? (This phenomenon seems to happen more often with males than females, so I will limit the discussion to male actors.) My friend, @markferne, had this experience recently: Now, Mark is a tall guy (6′ […]
A while ago, I wrote about how easy access to information has made consumers more powerful than ever. The rise of Groupon and other daily deal sites demonstrate this nicely. They offer retailers access to thousands of inboxes everyday. In exchange consumers get deep discounts on products and services. In other countries (China especially) there […]
Later this month, Phil Fernbach is moving to Boulder, CO to join the Leeds School of Business as a post doc in the Center for Consumer Financial Decision Making. You may remember Phil from a few recent posts. He and I have been looking at how you can win The New Yorker’s Cartoon Caption Contest […]
There are two prominent issues related to comedy and timing: One has to do with the way that a joke is executed: how quickly it is uttered, where the punch line is placed, when to pause, etc. I will save this issue for a future post. The other has to do with whether sufficient time […]
It is Startup Week in Boulder, CO. Tomorrow, Thursday 5/19 at 3:00 pm, I am leading a salon style discussion: Why startups should do experiments. I recently visited Dan Ariely, Duke University professor, best selling author, and proponent of experimentation in business (read more). In anticipation of the event, I asked him: Why should companies […]
