You likely remember the spelling rule, “I before E, except after C.” It’s been taught in English grammar textbooks at least as far back as 1866 and persists in modern school texts. In fact, it’s been called the “supreme, and for many people solitary, spelling rule.” The rule is supposed to help with the complexity…
Ever feel like time speeds up as you get older? In the book “Why Time Flies And Beauty Never Dies” Professor Adrian Bejan makes the case there is good reason we feel this way. Perceived time, sometimes called mind time, is different from clock time. Our perception of time changes as we age. For example,…
Fictitious promotions work because people love to feel like they got a deal. In one common type of fictitious promotions, a retailer raises the price of an item just before a sale and then “promotes” the product by claiming the original price is now the sales price. The Wall Street Journal article entitled “The Dirty…
“Now you’re cooking with gas.” On the surface, it was an odd thing for my friend to exclaim during a recent Memorial Day BBQ as I pulled some filets and corn off of my decidedly wood-fueled Big Green Egg. But I instantly understood the phrase – he was being appreciative of my cooking. The modern…
One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was to prioritize the big rocks. The concept of big rocks is attributed to Stephen Covey, the author of the wildly-popular book ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.’ Covey points out it’s common for people to focus on easy-to accomplish little things rather than…
Travel changes you in multiple ways: from how you interact with others to the way you think and make decisions. Travel might even make you healthier or more successful in business. Let’s examine the evidence… A 2013 research study compared the personalities of college students who studied abroad for at least one semester with those…
When I want to reinforce the need for critical thinking, I sometimes bring up the green coffee bean problem. In 2012, a research article entitled “Randomized, Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Linear Dose, Crossover Study to Evaluate the Efficacy and Safety of a Green Coffee Bean Extract in Overweight Subjects” was published in the seemingly reputable journal Diabetes,…
Have you ever heard of Nordstrom’s? It’s a trick question. The name of the store is actually Nordstrom. There is no letter ‘s’ in the name. The same is true with Kroger and JCPenney. Even the president made the mistake with supermarket chain Meijer. So why do people add ‘s’ to store names? The most…
Chesterton’s fence principle can be explained as follows: Don’t take down a fence until you know the reason it was put up in the first place. In other words, don’t be so quick to tear down things you don’t understand. G.K. Chesterton was an early 20th century English writer best known for the Father Brown…
Q: How many randomly-chosen people would need to be in the same room to virtually guarantee two of them share the same birthday? A: 75 (99.9% probability) This unintuitive answer is known as the birthday paradox. The earliest known publication of the birthday paradox was in 1939 by the mathematician Richard von Mises. However, there…