Public transportation ridership rose 37 percent from 1995 to 2013. That’s a good thing, right?

The conventional logic says that public transportation will rise as gas prices rise (basic economic situation there). That seemed to be the case in the 1950s in some cities, but now — via data from the American Public Transportation Association… Continue Reading

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If we want to solve the skills gap issue in the U.S., maybe we should turn to reciprocity (like parts of Europe)

“You don’t really know what you get,” she says. “If someone tells you they’re an electrician, they could have just exchanged light bulbs at an amusement park or they could have worked, maybe, at complex problems.” That quote is from… Continue Reading

Brief statistical interlude: Jordan, Qatar, and the UAE are the only countries where girls seem to be more comfortable with math

The chart above is from here via here and uses the metric of “feeling helpless” when confronted with a math problem. There are essentially only three countries in the world — Jordan, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — where girls are significantly ahead… Continue Reading

PBR and hipsters: maybe the best marketing is to avoid the big marketing, eh?

Check out that chart above, by way of Quartz here. PBR — which essentially barely advertises — is literally crushing the major light-beer brands, most of whom spend millions advertising. That makes no sense, though — right? We take these MBAs and we pay… Continue Reading

Did you know 89 billion business e-mails are sent in a given day? (Smashes face into desk.)

Look at that info-graphic and just weep. 89 billion business e-mails are sent per day. That’s a whole lot of “Got it, thx” or “Need that ASAP, plz.” Think about this: in 1995 or so, business e-mail wasn’t even a norm. Now… Continue Reading

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Brief thought exercise: what percentage of conversation in a given day is transactional/small talk?

Last night I was in this class, and there were eight full-time faculty members in the class to evaluate some presentations we had done, and prior to the class actually commencing there was pizza and much merriment (and some nerves… Continue Reading

If you interview inmates about their decision-making when they were younger, what can you learn?

That’s the idea behind a photo exhibit from Trent Bell (there’s an accompanying video embedded above). Only 12 men volunteered for Bell’s project, which came about when one of his good friends was sentenced to 36 years in jail — and… Continue Reading

72 percent of the Earth is covered by ocean. So desalination seems like a logical answer to drought, right? Not so fast.

California droughts right now might be the worst in 100 years, and Lake Mead’s at a fairly dangerous level (which threatens tourism mecca Las Vegas), so clearly we’re moving to the “answers” stage of our water problem. It would seem… Continue Reading