Tucker County, West Virginia is the least diverse place in America. Cue the eye rolls.

Randy Olson — a true “data visualization” guy — put in some work on the diversity of every county in the United States. There’s some detail on it here, and on his own blog here. Here’s how the process worked:… Continue Reading

The three most-searched-for terms in porn, from an occupation standpoint, are likely “teacher,” then “babysitter,” then “nurse”

The cliche is “pizza delivery boy” or “plumber,” but the reality is: Full data here (the link is safe for work; it’s just their Insights blog, which can actually teach you a lot about the habits of different parts of… Continue Reading

The process of boarding a plane was 50 percent slower in 1998 than in 1970. Can we fix this process? (Hello, Steffen Method vs. WILMA)

There is a surprising amount of research out there on the effectiveness of different plane-boarding processes — and, honestly, a surprising amount of videos on YouTube of literally nothing more than people waiting to board a plane. I suppose it all makes… Continue Reading

People are leaving New York, Chicago and Los Angeles for Houston, Dallas, Seattle, Charlotte and Nashville

The future of America, in several maps. Continue Reading

Brief thought exercise: In higher education, research is hard. It takes time (presumably). So is there truly any incentive to actually focus on teaching?

Two quick anecdotes to jump this off: 1. Last night, I was going to a graduate school class. I ran into my friend on the steps and we stood there talking for 10-15 minutes — in the process annoying the crap… Continue Reading

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Brief thought exercise: have you ever stopped and realized that the reason you’re not a chimp is 1/50th of your DNA?

I read Guns, Germs and Steel on the first intercontinental flight I ever took (which sadly didn’t happen until I was 28), and while that’s maybe not the best flying-over-the-Atlantic reading material, it was pretty captivating (it has sold millions of copies). I came… Continue Reading

Birmingham, Alabama is where college grads are the most segregated from everyone else, eh?

Birmingham has a pretty checkered history with another type of segregation, but now here comes some new research around the segregation of college graduates from everyone else within a given metro area. This is vaguely similar to previous research on cities where rich people… Continue Reading

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Could you apply blue ocean marketing/consumer-type strategies to the idea of leadership?

You might have heard of “blue ocean strategy.” It’s a very b-school term in some ways, but basically it means this: rather than going head-to-head with your competitors on everything, carve out “blue oceans” of untapped market space. It’s all documented… Continue Reading