The paperback edition of The Big Questions goes on sale today — and Amazon has it for 33% off. This is a good time to stock up on gift copies for all your friends who are curious about math, physics, economics, philosophy or rational inquiry. Thanks to all of you for making this such a rewarding enterprise, and for the many blog comments that will make the next book even better.
I’ve just bought my copy.
Strangely the UK version of Amazon has it for 30% off, whilst the American version has 33% off. Is there an economic explanation for this?
Did the copy editor’s mistake get fixed for the paperback edition?
I hate it when copy editors change stuff that I’ve written without asking me and it gets published with the mistake. Thomas Sowell wrote that in his last essay for the Wall Street Journal (“I do not mean my most recent essay”) he wrote about people who “had entree to Perkins” [the president of Cornell at the time] and an editor changed it to “had entry to Perkins”.
Market segmentation
Perkins segmentation.
I don’t get it – $13 on the kindle and $10 in paperback??
Dave,
Could this be an example of price discrimination?
“Could this be an example of price discrimination?”
I somehow doubt that Kindle buyers have a less elastic demand curve than paperback buyers or are willing to pay a premium for an electronic copy. (I’m not.) Fact is, Amazon caved in on a resale price maintenance arrangement with the publishers. Doesn’t seem like rational pricing, but tough luck for us fools who bought a Kindle early.
i see the paperback edition has 288 pages but the hardcover 267. i had bought the hardcover before 9 months.is there extra chapters? and if yes, can you upload the extra chapters here?
Kostis: The books are identical. I have no idea why Amazon is reporting different page counts.
Your premise “More Sex is Safer Sex” seems to have taken hit mathematically. This guy wrote some software to test your theory in a simulation he programmed. His results, “According to my simulation, persuading sexual conservatives to take more sexual partners will not “slow the spread of AIDS” or “save lives” as Landsburg promises. On the contrary, it will increase the spread of such diseases.”
http://code.activestate.com/recipes/577403-more-sex-safer-sex-paradox/
His code just hit a widely read news aggregate for programmers and the comments from other pros are building up.
I forgot to include the aggregate link in the previous post (now up to 50 comments).
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1748469