25 questions · 21 almanac · 0 findings

Sociology and Social Science

The study of society, groups, and social behavior.

Almanac A Car Priced for Everyone
  • How did the mass adoption of the Model T reshape American suburbs and infrastructure over the following decades?
Almanac Seventy-Three Seconds Over Florida
  • What organisational lesson did the Rogers Commission draw about flying with known risks until they stop seeming extraordinary?
Almanac A Nation Read Through Its Doughnut Shops
  • What scholarly methods did Penfold borrow from the study of churches and trade unions to analyse doughnut shops?
  • Why did the Ig Nobel committee consider the doughnut shop a legitimate subject for academic sociology?
Almanac Sad Songs, Correlated
  • What correlation did Stack and Gundlach find between country music radio play and suicide rates?
Almanac Scholarship for Calling Someone a Bastard
  • What did David Sims's paper 'You Bastard' examine about how employees narrate their own workplace indignation?
  • How do the private stories people tell about being wronged at work go on to shape their later behaviour?
Almanac Promote at Random, the Models Said
  • What is the Peter Principle and how did the Catania physicists test it mathematically?
  • Why did random promotion outperform merit-based promotion in the simulations?
Almanac The Mathematics of a Well-Timed Lie
  • What role does gossip play in enforcing cooperation within social groups, according to the study?
  • How does the game-theoretic model determine when a rational gossiper should lie rather than tell the truth?
Almanac The Oldest People Who Never Were
  • Why might incomplete or falsifiable historical birth records inflate reported rates of extreme longevity in certain regions?