Wednesday, April 11, 2012

Social Science is Beautiful

Check out this post where Brett Keller uses sophisticated social science statistical methods to ascertain how badly fixed the Hunger Games depicted in the novel/movie are. 

All I can say is that we live in a wonderful time where folks can radically over-think some pop culture and then disseminate widely and quickly via Al Gore's internet.  Indeed, all Alan Sepinwall has to do is ask the internet, and it provides him with the rules for True American must mere hours after the game was presented on New Girl.

Anyhow, back to the Hunger Games analysis--I am now beginning to regret not teaching Intro to IR next fall, as we now have a great example of a collective action problem: why doesn't every kid in a Panem district ask for the max amount of tessera?  If every kid does this, their odds of being entered into the games does not change....

Read the piece--it is chock full of nerdy goodness.

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