Tuesday's Assorted Links
Tuesday's Assorted Links
Grade inflation, take-home assignments, greatest inventions of 2023, working women, and coffee shops
Hi y’all! Here are five stories from this week that contained some neat applications of economic principles or are related to teaching:
Almost 80% of undergraduate grades given at an Ivy League school last year were A’s or A-minuses [The New York Times]
Take-home assignments during the job interview process are on the rise [Bloomberg]
The 50 greatest innovations of 2023 [Popular Science]
The share of employed US women ages 25-54 recently hit a record 75.3% [Penn Wharton Budget Model]
An interactive map of American coffee shops that aren’t Starbucks [Nahbucks]
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You may not love the teams the College Football Playoff Committee picked for this year’s playoffs, but the alternative ways of allocating those spots look a whole lot worse! What seems like an arbitrary decision actually may have been the best option among alternatives.
The problem with basing decisions on arbitrary characteristics is that it will often leave some groups unhappy with the outcome. For now, let’s imagine a world where the committee used some other criteria to determine who gets to play for the championship:
