Different Inflation Perspectives of Men and Women

Between society's “haves” and “have-nots”, the former are better positioned to endure cost-of-living increases. As the results, they tend to be less sensitive to price increases, and have the so called "lower inflation perceptions and expectations".

However the gender is also a factor here - study shows that sex can influence inflation expectations too: after holding income, age, education, race and marital status constant, women consistently think inflation is 1.9% points higher than men, and they expect prices to rise 2.1% points more than men.

Now you know why women love coupons and sales.

Men get their coffee earlier than women

Here is an small-size survey conducted in eight coffee shops in the Boston area. Researchers want to know how long it took men and women to be served. The results:

men get their coffee 20 seconds earlier than women. (There is also evidence that black people wait longer than white people, the young wait longer than the old, and the ugly wait longer than the beautiful. But these effects are statistically not as persuasive.)

Not sure if this is because men are more decisive orderer than women, or coffee shops' staff feel more implicit psychological pressure to meet the needs of the male customers.

Voting candidates based on how they makes us feel

Earlier research had shown that people make judgments about someone’s trustworthiness, competence, aggressiveness and other traits in a mere 1/10 of a second, by just looking at that person's face, or in another word, how that person makes people feel.

Now, in a study published recently, reseacher goes one depressing step further: these lightning-quick facial judgments can predict real-world election results, with 70% accuracy.

How contagious is your yawn ?

We all know yawning is contagious, but can we measure how contagious is it? or can we somehow engineer a yawn to become perfectly contagious? According to this interesting NPR story, Robert Provine, a professor of psychology at the University of Maryland, try to design a 100% contagious yawn.

"A number of studies found that a medley of ordinary yawns on video played to a classroom for five minutes would induce a responsive yawn in 55% of the audience. So that was his starting point: could he design a yawn powerful enough to move from a 55% response right up to Total Yawn-ness?".

The results? no matter what the Prof. Provine tried, he could not make a yawn with more 55% response rate.

The secrete of a good wine

In the past, one could get by on intuition and experience. Times have changed. Today, the name of the game is data and analysis. Here is an example of how to evaluate wines by the number - according to Princeton University economics professor Orley Ashenfelter,

Wine quality = 12.145 + 0.00117 x winter rainfall + 0.0614 x average growing season temperature - 0.00386 x harvest rainfall

Who need prenups ?

Source.

"A 2003 Harvard Law School study showed that although survey subjects knew the national divorce rate is more than 50%, they estimated their own likelihood of getting divorced one day to be about 12%. It's called optimism bias, and it's one reason only 1% of married couples reported prenups in a 2002 survey by Harris Interactive for Lawyers.com".

Why fingernails grow faster than toenails ?

In the current issue of Popular Science (Sept. 2007), there is a Q&A for this question. (I sometime ask myself the same when cutting nails). It turned out fingernails grow about 1 tenth of an inch per month, about 2 times as fast as toenails.

There are 2 theories for this disparity in growth rate. One theory suggests that hands benefits from better blood circulation - and thus, a better supply of oxygen and nutrients - because they are physically close to your heart than your feet.

Another theories the so-called trauma theory. The persistent minor traumas, such as typing, actually stimulate fingernails growth. Whereas our toes enjoys a virtually trauma-free existence inside socks and shoes.

Is there life after death ?

I don't believe there is life after death. This is just my opinion, for now. Many Americans think otherwise. See data below. (from The Now York Time)

Men with high levels of testosterone

Have you heard of the ultimatum game? It is played with two participants. The first is offered $40 and allowed to choose how much of that $40 to share with the second person. If the second person accepts the offer, the money is awarded to each as agreed. If the second person rejects the offer, neither gets any money. Economic theory predicts that the second person should always accept the offer. After all, $1 is better than nothing, but research has shown that people expect a little more fairness, and will reject lopsided offers. Now, probing further, one researcher discovered that men with high levels of testosterone are more likely to reject lowball offers.
In fact, the responders who rejected a low final offer had an average testosterone level more than 50% higher than the average of those who accepted. It looks like "what people really strive for is relative rather than absolute prosperity. They would rather accept less themselves than see a rival get ahead. That is likely to be particularly true in individuals with high testosterone levels, since that hormone is correlated with social dominance in many species".

Lucky number 7

From grooms to gambles, people here in US believe the number 7 has mystical significance. Nowhere is that more apparent than in the mecca of Superstition - the Las Vega Strip. According to this week's Barron's Magazine, July 7 (last Saturday, or the one-in-a-century 07/07/07, the game usage was up 47% when compared with July 7 of last year (which was Friday), up 28% if compared with July 8 of last year (which was also a Saturday). Those number indicate significant increase in gaming activity. I read somewhere that marriages in US was up by 30% on the July 7 weekend over a similar Saturday last year.

.What can I say? People are meaning machines. We look for hints about what the future will hold and add meaning, often where there is none.

Men are as talkative as women

The notion that women talk more than men is widespread. But how much more? In a recent book written by a noted neuropsychiatrist, the numbers are - "a woman uses about 20,000 words a day, while a man uses only about 7,000." My personal experience tells me the difference is not that dramatic; women talk about 10 - 40% more than men.

In a latest study on this suject, scientist recorded the conversations of nearly 400 U.S. and Mexican male and female university students, for periods ranging from two to 10 days. To catch all of this chit-chat, they developed an electronically-activated recorder (with the fortuitous acronym EAR) that digitally, and unobtrusively, logged the daily conversations of those who wore the device.

The results: women in the study spoke a daily average of 16,215 words during their waking hours, versus an average of 15,669 words for men. True, the women win, but not by a statistically significant margin at all.

Men bite more than women

Recall the notorious 1997 Tyson-Holyfield boxing match? After examing 92 patients referred to the plastic surgery unit of St. James's Hospital in Dublin for human bites, a study (published in the Emergency Medical Journal ) found that man 12 times as likely as a woman to be bitten by his fellow man. 86% of the biting were related to alcohol consumption, and 70% of biting incidents happened on a weekend or public holiday.

Tattoo regret and removal

According to an interesting New York Time report, there are currently about 45 million Americans tattooed; however 17% of them regret it later, as life changes. Here are some reasons for the tattoo removal: 1) get my ex-fiance's name off my body. 2) I don't want my tattoos to show around my strapless wedding gown. 3) I need to start looking employable and marriageable. 4) I want to replace my old tattoos with new ones.

High gasoline price humor

A friend sent me following high gasoline price humor cartoons. Enjoy!

Mother's Day Statistics

Tomorrow is the 100th anniversary of Mother's Day. Americans will spend about $16 billion dollars to celebrate it - cards, flowers, shows and restaurants. For restaurant owners, tomorrow will bring their business more than any other day of the year. You can hear more history and some numbers about Mother's Day here.

The world is walking faster

The pace of global cities is speeding up. A new survey of 32 cities around world showing people are walking 10% more quickly than they did 10 years ago. Singapore showed a 30% increase, making it the most frenetic city in the study. New York was ranked 8th, People live in Middle East walk the slowest.

World's oldest college graduate, CEO

Kansas (US) resident Nola Ochs will break a Guinness World Record when she graduates from Fort Hays State University next month, at the age of 95. Her 21-year-old granddaughter will graduate with her. What is her plan with that degree ? "I am going to seek employment on a cruise ship as a storyteller," She said.

At age 106, Jack Weil (Denver,US) still goes to work every day at Rockmount Ranch Wear, the western clothing apparel company he founded in 1946. He is believed to be the world's oldest CEO. Company's cowboy shirts have been on shopping list of many celebrities (Ronald Reagan, Elvis Presley, 'Brokeback Mountain' movie crew, to name a few).

Increase in obesity linked to wealth reduction

I found an interesting, but a bit old research news (Economics and Human Biology, July 2005) - overweight Americans who lose a lot of weight also tend to build more wealth as they drop the pounds. The study used data involving about 7,300 people who participated in the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.

The results showed that a 1 unit increase in a young person's body mass index score (BMI) was associated with a $1,300 or 8% reduction in wealth. But the changes varied dramatically by ethnicity and gender. For example, white women who dropped their BMI score by 10 points saw a wealth increase of $11,880. White men saw an increase of $12,720 for a similar drop, while black women increased wealth by $4,480.

The data in this study can't tell us whether a person's wealth affects obesity, or whether obesity affects wealth. However, researchers thought it is more likely that weight influences wealth. One possible explanation, which I believe is true, would be that overweight and obese people (particularly white women) are discriminated against in the workforce, and don't earn as much money as normal weight people.

Funny numbers on T-shirts

I found (from www.cafepress.com) following funny numbers printed on T-shirts. Enjoy!

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Do women work more than men do ?

All wives, universally, believe they work more hours than their husbands do. Common sense tells us women work more than men do. However, if you take a scientific look at this, as 3 economists (Michael Burda of Humboldt University in Berlin, Daniel Hamermesh of the University of Texas, and Philippe Weil of the Free University of Brussels) did in their research on 25 countries (rich and poor), the answer to the title question is, on average, a sounding NO.

Researches divided daily 24 hours into four broad activities: "market work" that is, work for pay, typically outside the house; "homework," including housework and child care; "tertiary time," including sleep, eating, and other biological necessities that people can do only for themselves; and the time left over, which is leisure.

Throughout the world, men spend more time on market work, while women spend more time on homework. In the United States and other rich countries, men average 5.2 hours of market work a day and 2.7 hours of homework each day, while women average 3.4 hours of market work and 4.5 hours of homework per day. Adding these up, men work an average of 7.9 hours per day, while women work an average of, well, 7.9 hours per day.

Two more interesting findings from the same research report:

1) although men in many rich countries do not work less than women, they do enjoy about 20 to 30 minutes more leisure per day because they spend less time on sleep and other biological necessities. Men spend almost all of this additional leisure time watching television.

2) while men and women spend about the same time working in rich countries, women do work more than men in poor countries, and the gap widens as countries get poorer. It appears better educated husbands in rich countries are more willing to help their wives.