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Strikingly Low Agreement in the Appraisal of Motion Pictures
Movie watcher's "ratings correlate only weakly with the judgment of professional movie critics"
In Australia, a private prison company gets a bonus for every freed inmate who does not come back
This seems like an interesting incentive to get private prison operators to promote rehabilitation.
Why we need data on what the poorest think
"The World Bank recently ... asked their own staff to what extent they imagined poorer and richer people in three countries would agree with the statement: ‘What happens to me in the future mostly depends on me.’ Bank staff predicted that around 20 per cent of poor people would agree with the statement. In fact, more than 80 per cent of poor people felt that what happened to them in the future depended on their own efforts – four times as many as the World Bank staff had predicted, and about the same proportion as richer people. It’s worth letting that sink in. Here we have staff in one of the most powerful development agencies in the world, freely assuming that the people whom they are employed to work with, and for, feel passive and helpless when in fact the opposite is the case. These perceptions have consequences."