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  • Friday, 13 May, 2022
    Tim Harford
    The oil slick effect, or why we systematically overgeneralise

    We struggle to acknowledge that something can be good in some ways and bad in others

  • Friday, 29 April, 2022
    Tim Harford
    The billable hour is a trap more and more of us are falling into

    When time is money, you have to spend it wisely

  • Friday, 22 April, 2022
    Tim Harford
    The fun way to predict the unpredictable

    How games can help us predict crises we never knew were possible

  • Friday, 8 April, 2022
    Tim Harford
    The lesson humble sea urchins offer about economic resilience

    The internet ensured pandemic resilience. But the next crisis could be different

  • Friday, 1 April, 2022
    Tim Harford
    Five ways to fight the information war

    ‘The good news is that every one of us has been in training for it all our lives’

  • Friday, 25 March, 2022
    Tim Harford
    Why I won’t be launching my fantasy novels on Kickstarter

    Brandon Sanderson broke crowdfunding records, but his success has limited relevance for the rest of us

  • Friday, 18 March, 2022
    Tim Harford
    What an abusive chatbot can teach us about the art of conversation

    Complexity, context and ambiguity do not play well on social media

  • Friday, 11 March, 2022
    Tim Harford
    What Le Corbusier got right about office space

    When workers are empowered to shape their own space, they do better work

  • Friday, 4 March, 2022
    Tim Harford
    Putin’s actions make no sense. That is his strength

    Russia’s president holds a weak hand, except for the one card no rational person would play

  • Friday, 25 February, 2022
    Tim Harford
    Why do some great ideas just fail to scale?

    Inside the fascinating phenomenon known as ‘voltage drop’

  • Friday, 18 February, 2022
    Tim Harford
    Why did we stop building beautiful neighbourhoods?

    Governments lack the incentive, businesses usually lack the power and ​​almost everyone seems to lack the skill

  • Friday, 11 February, 2022
    Tim Harford
    I learnt the hard way that maintenance matters

    Fixing and looking after stuff is not high-status or sexy, but the world should take it more seriously

  • Friday, 4 February, 2022
    Tim Harford
    Why real inflation is so hard to measure

    Scientists and bean-counters everywhere need to fill gaps in our knowledge rather than stumble into them

  • Friday, 28 January, 2022
    Tim Harford
    How to make resolutions stick

    ‘Look for a fresh start that will last, a change of routine or context to which a new habit can be pinned’

  • Friday, 21 January, 2022
    Tim Harford
    Hard truths about the gender pay gap

    We tend to think of the disparity between men and women as a problem of fairness, but it’s also a problem of efficiency

  • Friday, 14 January, 2022
    Tim Harford
    Omicron optimist, pessimist or fatalist: which are you?

    ‘The variant has demonstrated that Sars-Cov-2 can mutate more dramatically than we had hoped’

  • Thursday, 6 January, 2022
    Tim Harford
    How to stand up to your bullying inbox

    Are endless emails holding you to ransom? Time to fight back

  • Friday, 17 December, 2021
    Tim Harford
    How to give the perfect Christmas present

    Gift-givers rarely think about practicality — for example, when will the recipient actually get a chance to use this?

  • Friday, 10 December, 2021
    Tim Harford
    The life-saving magic of board games

    ‘We pretended to be wizards in a game I created, inspired by the work of Ursula Le Guin. Nerdy? Weird? I don’t care’

  • Friday, 26 November, 2021
    Tim Harford
    Drive a gas-guzzler, buy a coal mine and other uses of reverse logic

    ‘The perfectly logical case for employing reverse logic’

  • Friday, 19 November, 2021
    Tim Harford
    What parking tickets tell us about political corruption

    The recent outcry suggests that there is still a price to be paid for breaking the rules, or for trying to rewrite them

  • Friday, 12 November, 2021
    Tim Harford
    How my local neighbourhood got ‘Jerxit’ done

    It is time for the people of Jericho, Oxford, to take back control and declare independence

  • Friday, 5 November, 2021
    Tim Harford
    Christmas? I had it all wrapped up long ago

    Parkinson’s Law also applies to spending: Christmas expands so as to fill the time available for its completion

  • Friday, 29 October, 2021
    Tim Harford
    The climate won’t wait. We need a carbon tax now

    The time for handwringing is definitively over, argues Tim Harford

  • Friday, 22 October, 2021
    Tim Harford
    Notes on a statistical scandal

    The demise of the Doing Business report is a cautionary tale, but we’re in danger of learning the wrong lessons

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