Jordan Rapp is back with another insightful reflection on his race at the Princeton 70.3:
Ironman 70.3 Princeton
Princeton, NJ ✮ 2014.09.21
Economics is the science of explaining tomorrow why the predictions you made yesterday didn't come true today. - Demotivators
My father is an economist. I'm not sure why exactly I mention this except perhaps to postulate that some of my wondering "what if?" is inherited. My father is somewhat of an exception in that he does not think of economics as a hard science, but more of a way of thinking about certain types of monetary issues. He's a macro-economist (so different than the now super popular Freakonomics guy Steven Levitt), and he tends to be more a big picture guy. But he's a good critical thinker, and I like to think I've followed in his footsteps in that regard. One of the core tools of economics is the "natural experiment." This is when you get a chance to look at a data set that you couldn't - or wouldn't - be able to create for moral, ethical, logistical, or various other reasons. The various Freakonomics books are basically elegantly told stories of creative natural experiments.