Number of words: 425 To understand one of the many reasons why goals can backfire, consider the experience of trying to hail a taxi in a major city during a rainstorm. If you’ve ever had to do this, you’ll be familiar with the despair it can induce – and you probably think you understand why … Read more

Number of words: 2,216 During the 2012 presidential election, there occurred one of those remarkably rare moments when campaign rhetoric actually clarified a large issue. It happened when Barak Obama, speaking without a written text, spoke from his heart and revealed his mind: “Look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. … Read more

Number of words: 1,282 Tamil is not as emotive an issue for the people of Tamil Nadu, as it is made out to be by the Tamil television channels and English media. If it is so, it is neither reflected in the state’s education system, nor in the education choices of Tamilians.Just a few days … Read more

Number of words: 355 Trivers treated a parent animal as if it were a rational agent calculating what economists call the ‘opportunity cost’ of an action. A parent has to pay costs of rearing each offspring. Among these costs might be food, including time and effort spent gathering it, time spent protecting the child from … Read more

Number of words: 2,716 In a weedy field 35 miles west of Chicago squats a tidy red-brick building with a peaked roof, about the size of a one-car garage. Against the eastern wall, reaching just above the roofline, are poles equipped with small dish antennas that send microwave signals to and gather them from financial … Read more

Number of words: 407 The rise of fintech has the potential to extend the benefits of financial inclusion to millions of people but also poses complex regulatory challenges, says a new UN-backed report which also questions the value of the increasingly popular sandbox approach. In a report for the UN Secretary-General’s Special Advocate for Inclusive … Read more

Number of words: 2,729 SINGAPORE: Last year, a man-versus-machine showdown took place in the United States. 20 top corporate lawyers from across the country were pitted against an artificial intelligence (AI) software developed by legal technology firm LawGeex, where they reviewed and approved everyday contracts over a period of two months. The results were astounding. … Read more

Number of words: 3,521  “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest” … reads the banner hanging on the wall of a mammoth building, just across the street from my office. This quote is by Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America. During a British Airways  flight from London to Washington DC in January … Read more

Number of words: 352 In the process, Dataism inverts the traditional pyramid of learning. Hitherto, data was seen as only the first step in a long chain of intellectual activity. Humans were supposed to distil data into information, information into knowledge, and knowledge into wisdom. However, Dataists believe that humans can no longer cope with … Read more

Number of words – 906 Why do workers in the financial industry get paid so much? There are many possible explanations, none of them completely satisfying. The financial industry commands a much larger share of the U.S. economy than in the past, causing some to worry that the industry gets more money than its economic … Read more