My new book is now on sale! Readers of this blog will recognize some but not nearly all of these 100+ puzzles (146, actually, by my count). If you’ve enjoyed my puzzle posts, you’ll probably enjoy these extended discussions of some past puzzles, and the many more that are entirely new. Most of these puzzles are designed to teach important lessons about economics, broadly defined to encompass all purposeful human behavior. All of them are also designed to be fun.
Once you’ve had a look, please don’t hesitate to share your opinions right here on the blog — or better yet (especially if your opinions are positive!) don’t hesitate to share them on Amazon or on Goodreads.
Or, if you’d prefer to taste the milk before you buy the cow, here is the introduction, absolutely free of charge.
You can read a few advance reviews here. And remember, the more copies you buy, the sooner I’ll write the sequel.
You should create a new puzzle for the blog, whose solution is an Amazon discount promo code for the book.
I’ve started reading it, and it’s great!
One thing I like about the tale of the Yoram Baumann article is that it shows that undergraduate economics education has a positive effect on students.
Preordered the book the first time our gracious host mentioned it here and looking forward to reading it now.
Speaking of discounts, for some reason mysterious to me, Amazon gave me a voucher for some other books of 40% of the cost of “Can You Outsmart an Economist?”
Amazon won’t let me buy the kindle edition because I am located in Canada.
Is there going to be an audiobook?
Is there going to be a movie?
(And should we get Frank Gorshin or Cory Michael Smith to play The Riddler?)
@nobody.really If Russell Crowe can play John Forbes Nash, I don’t see why he wouldn’t be up to playing our gracious host.
As the end of the millennium approached, I asked my brother if Francis Fukuyama was right that we had reached the end of history.
My brother responded, “Didja hear that they’re making a John Nash movie? That means that on the great list of potential movie concepts, studios are now reduced to choosing between biopics about economists—or somebody named Bridget Jones. Talk about diminishing marginal returns….”
@nobody.really
Interesting that you should refer to Nash as economist, doubtlessly on the basis of evidence as flimsy as him receiving the Nobel Prize in that field.
In fact, I believe that Nash spent most of his working life on mathematics (the field in which his degree was) and in particular real analysis.
My favorite Nash result is the embedding theorem named for him.
As everybody knows, you can embed certain Riemannian manifolds in higher-dimensional Euclidean spaces. For example, a 2d sphere is easily embedded in a 3d Euclidean space as anybody who has ever seen a globe can attest. Conversely, a 2d Klein bottle can famously only be embedded in 4d Euclidean space, but not 3d Euclidean space.
So the question is: Can every Riemannian manifold be embedded into a sufficiently high-dimensional Euclidean space? Easy to ask, but it took Nash to answer it in the affirmative.
Speaking of mathematics, what does everybody think of Atiyah’s claim to have proven the Riemann hypothesis (and also found a mathematical basis for the fine structure constant, while he was at it anyway).
I’m no expert in the area, but the proof strikes me as too straightforward not to have been discovered in the last 150 years.
Sub Specie
I expect the question of whether Atiyah has proved the RH to be answered in real time, unlike the question of whether Mochizuki has proved the abc conjecture.
That is, time adjusted for inflation (a/k/a that brief period following the Big Bang.)
Congrats!
@Sub #9. I think the general consensus is “probably not but let’s see”. The claim seems to be that the hard work got done somewhere else.
@Steve. Congrats on the new book. Ordered and looking forward to reading.
Found a Kobo edition available in Canada. Purchased and enjoyed.
I realize that the name of this blog is The Big Questions, but it wouldn’t hurt to include some photo/blurb about the new book on the home page.
Or maybe even start a new blog: The Little Questions….
nobody.really: I’m usually pretty fearless (some might say reckless) when it comes to coding, but I believe the home page (as opposed to most of the other pages on this site) is entirely encoded in the MySQL, which I’ve always been a little scared to monkey with.
Congratulations!
Good book title.
I have a quibble about one of your problems.
A two child family is chosen at random.
a) If at least one of the children is a boy, what is the probability they’re both boys?
b) If at least one of the children is the blind poet Homer, author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, what is the probability they’re both boys?
In your solution for part b, you didn’t clarify Homer’s sex and we don’t know anything about the historical sex of Homer really. It’s speculated he was a man, but there are theories Homer was a group of people, or a woman. Assuming he was a woman, for example, the outcome to part b could have been Homer (girl)/girl, Homer (girl)/boy, Homer (boy)/boy, boy/Homer(boy), girl/Homer (boy), and girl/Homer (girl). From this, I conclude the probability that both children are boys to be 1/3.
Z: Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d have thought that if we posit that we’re going to believe the historical sources that say Homer was blind, I think we’re pretty much committed to also believing he was male, no?
Amazon.co.uk says the physical version will take 1-3 month to dispatch. Is the book not released in the UK yet?
I would prefer a physical version, but I would also prefer to read it right now than in 3 months time, so will have a decision to make if not.
John Faben: I hadn’t known about this delay. I’ll email to see what we can do.