1. Quantity hurts quality - the more dishes the restaurant will cook, the less likely the restaurant is good at cooking any of them.

2. In general people feel twice as much pain when losing something as they do joy at making a positive choice. Thus when more options are presented, the diner will feel more pain for all the items he didn't choose to eat. This increases the chances the diner won't enjoy his/her meal.

3. In general (by my own experience) people make selections based on the choices in front of them - obviously people pick a type of restaurant like Mexican or Chinese, but rarely fixate on a specific menu item. In fact, if the menu is shorter the odds of creating a memorable dish (and repeat customers) increases.When was the last time you remembered an item you picked from a menu of more than 40 items?

Putting more items on the menu may be an attempt to cast the net as wide as possible. But it's not a good idea; it increases diner anxiety and decreases the chances of making a memorable dish. In N Out has thrived with exactly three menu options: Hamburger, Cheeseburger, and Double-Double. Momofuku Ko opened with a focus on just one idea and one dish, making the best noodles in New York City.

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From Study Hacks. There's no substitute for doing.

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Tyler Cowen told me that "You need to start somewhere" in learning about the global economy. I don't think that's a great answer and I'm skeptical about learning things from a group of people whose collective opinion on the subprime crisis and the 2008 economy was wildly incorrect.

Every macro class starts with a simple overarching model of the world, then explains why the model's wrong and looks at more complicated models. But from the beginning, macroeconomists are trying to explain every facet of the economy.

Contrast that with the field of robotics, which I'm starting today as well. First-time robotics students build small robots with limited abilities. Potential class projects include building a robot that's able to use an elevator, one that can navigate the hallways around the classroom by itself, or one that can pick up soda cans and deposit them into trash cans. Robot people have very lofty goals, however, including fielding a soccer team of 11 robots that could beat Brazil's best team, and replicating the human brain in computer software. But they're building from the bottom up; starting by solving low-level human functions and gradually making more complicated robots as we better understand the problems and ideas involved.

Macroeconomists want to understand the global economy; robot people want to understand the human brain. These are incredibly complicated systems but the approaches are totally different.

If macroeconomists were trying to understand how the human brain works, I feel like they would start by building a giant processor, giving it an initial set of instructions, then continually tinkering the instructions to make the processor more like a human. I estimate it would take around a thousand years of tinkering to produce something resembling the human brain.

If robot people were trying to understand the economy, they'd start by breaking down and trying to fully understand the components - each firm, the decisions facing each worker, and compiling those into a model of the economy as a whole. This would be a long process - but shorter than starting with the whole system and slowly tinkering.

Better to break a system into parts, understand the parts and build back up than to try to understand the whole system.

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From Tim Harford's Logic of Life, an input-output theory of legislation: "Here's a surefire vote-winner: Take $1.9 billion from a large number of voters, distribute $1 billion to a small number of voters and throw away the rest." When you put it that way it really sounds silly. But this particular bill, a subsidy for the sugar industry, passes year after year. This is an example of a big problem with representative government - a small focused interest beats a widespread, unfocused one every time, to the detriment of the widespread. The arguments used are rarely logical, and largely irrelevant.

I went to Carmel last weekend, and saw a woman feeding squirrels literally one foot away from a sign begging visitors not to feed the squirrels and to let them find their own food. My brother asked her why she was feeding the squirrels. Her response: "Oh - well this food is from Whole Foods, so it's okay."

Finally, from the latest Battlestar Galactica episode title, from Ken Kesey's book Sometimes a Great Notion, from the song "Goodnight, Irene:"

Sometimes I live in the country,
Sometimes I live in town,
Sometimes I have a great notion;
To jump in into the river and drown

The singer goes on to say, "Go home to your wife and your family" - focus on your relations with those that matter, and avoid vice where you can.

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I was on a plane to Washington D.C. to look at Georgetown and other East Coast schools. I was heading to my seat at the back of the plane when I saw Obama, sitting on the aisle, wearing a white shirt and looking really tired. From the looks of things I was the only one on the plane who recognized him.

I didn't say anything, shake his hand or write him a letter, although I contemplated doing all of those. It sounds stupid now, but I was worried it was a totally random guy. I thought Senators had escorts and people around them 24/7, especially since Obama was a potential presidential candidate.

As soon as we deplane he and a few other Congressmen were whisked away by a team of guys in suits. By that point of course it was too late.

Anyway, that's my Obama story.

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Remind ourselves the first principle of conservatism is not tax cuts or free trade or even smaller government. It is prudence, and prudence should be our guide.

Prudence dictates we take seriously the concerns of those who elect us and tailor our policy proposals to counter the government-mandate-heavy ideas bound to emerge from the other side.

Americans want something done about the 43 million of us who lack health care. The question is not: Should government care? It must. The question is: Do we get a top-down, Washington-knows-best, one-size-fits-all “solution” or a Massachusetts-style program that preserves choice for patients and discretion for doctors?

That's Tom Davis talking about how to get the Republican Party back on track. I hope the Republicans do get back on track - states and the federal government are spending more and more - while the private sector economy lost 500,000 jobs in December, state and local governments added 6,000. This spending is beyond our current means, which signals a generational transfer of wealth - the current generation is spending the youth generation's money, the equivalent of accumulating credit card debt and then passing the bill to your kids. Currently 9% or so of the federal budget goes toward interest on the national debt. The Republicans need to quickly find their place again, but the prospects don't look good.

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In basketball, the traditional maxim in late-game situations is to go for the win on the road, and go for the tie at home, because home teams generally have an advantage in overtime situations (Soccer games have no overtime and the reverse applies - in tied games road teams buckle down and home teams press for the win). The NFL's sudden-death overtime rule is perverse - the team that has the ball first scores 50% of the time on the first drive, putting a huge emphasis on the coin toss (and luck). So, in the NFL, the strategy must be to try to win the game when you can.

Intuition and past experience tells me that teams usually convert 4th-and-inches situations. But for backup I turn to a 2005 paper on 4th-down situations by David Romer, an economist at UC Berkeley. Figure 5 on page 43 is the key graph - with yards to go on the Y axis and the yard line on the X axis, any situation below the solid line indicates that it's better to try and convert the 4th down than to kick a field goal or punt, and any situation above. Generally, it's better to go for it on any situation when you have less than 3 yards to go, and as you approach the opponents end zone kicking becomes a worse idea and going for it becomes better.

Romer recognized that punts and kickoffs (which follow field goals) have a significant negative value; they give the other team decent field position and a chance to drive down the field. Going for it on 4th down puts the defense under tremendous pressure; they have to stop the offense for another down.

The Game Situation

This was the game situation:

Home playoff game.
Down 3 points.
4th and Inches from the Ravens' 10 yard line.
4:26 to go.

Fisher could choose to kick a field goal (3 points) to tie the game, or try to convert the 4th down and go for the touchdown and 4-point lead, which would have forced the Ravens to go for the endzone. He kicked the field goal, and the Ravens moved the ball 51 yards and kicked a field goal to win.

If Fisher went for it on 4th down and converted (I would put this at probability 50-75%), the Titans probably would have gone on to score a touchdown, putting the Titans up 4 and forcing the Ravens to score a touchdown (advance to the goal line) in 4 minutes. The Titans have an excellent chance to win the game.

If Fisher went for iton 4th down and failed, the Ravens would have the ball on the 10 yard line with a 3 point lead and 4:20 to play. This is a bad situation for the Steelers, but not horrible: they still had 2 timeouts and the 2 minute warning to stop the clock. If they can stop the Ravens they'll get the ball back with a chance to win or tie. Note that after the Titans kick a field goal, the defense still has to stop the Ravens from scoring (gaining 3-4 first downs). If they go for it and fail, they have to stop the Ravens from getting 2 first downs; from the defense's perspective this is more or less the same situation.

By kicking the field goal, the Titans kicked off, giving the Ravens the ball on the 24 yard line, an improvement of 14 yards over surrendering the ball. The defense has to stop the Ravens from advancing the ball, which they failed to do, and the Ravens kicked a field goal to win.

Going for it puts the Titans in the best position to win the game - if they convert they're in an excellent position and if they don't convert, they still have to stop the Ravens as they would after a field goal, and might have another chance to tie or win. Bykicking a field goal, the traditional choice, Fisher won't draw criticism from the mainstream press, but it's not the decision that gives the Titans the best chance to win. If Fisher had gone for it and failed, he would have been slammed in the media. This is unfortunate, but presents an opportunity for a bold, unflappable coach to optimize play-calling strategy and gain a significant edge over his counterparts.

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A girl who looked about 18 screamed as a surgeon removed shrapnel from her leg. An elderly man was soaked in blood. A baby a few weeks old and slightly wounded looked around helplessly. A man lay with parts of his brain coming out. His family wailed at his side.

Don’t you see that these people are hurting?” the militant was asked.

“But I am from the people, too,” he said, his smile incandescent. “They lost their loved ones as martyrs. They should be happy. I want to be a martyr, too.”

Story from the New York Times. James Surowiecki wonders why the New York Times doesn't advertise. I believe he's right that they don't advertise much.Perhaps the channels we associate most with advertising (TV commercials, billboards, magazine ads, stadium sponsorships) wouldn't reach NYT's target market (I have heard ads for the NYT on NPR). Furthermore, maybe idealists in the NYT think that too much advertising would compromise its editorial integrity.

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Nearly 99% of couples predict at the time of marriage that they'll stay married forever, but 50% of marriages end in divorce. This makes me worry; how can I know that my partner and I will stay happily married? Even a small amount of prediction in this area can reap tremendous dividends, similar to the Netflix Prize. Even better would be a predictor of which couples will still feel the same way for each other twenty years on; the market for true love is large.

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