Tuesday, February 21, 2006

A Few Bad Apples

Malcolm Gladwell has an amazing article in the New Yorker about how social policy is complicated when the distribution of problems follows a power law instead of a bell curve. Effective solutions to problems like homelessness and police abuse can be deeply counter-intuitive. Come to think of it, the social costs of terrorism all but certainly follow a power law distribution.

Link from Matthew Yglesias, who is always excellent.

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