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Nearly two centuries later, psychologist Dean Simonton has gathered research supporting Quetelet’s early observations: the most accomplished scientists, artists, and scholars are also those who produce the most. Simonton explains that across many domains, personal productivity and social creativity are highly correlated. If we look at the pattern of creativity across an individual’s career, Simonton argues, the periods when a person produces their best work also tend to be the periods when they produce the most work. Measuring the number of highly acclaimed works and dividing them by the total can produce a kind of quality ratio. “This ratio of hits to total shots does not change in a regular pattern with age,” Simonton explains. “The ratio neither increases nor decreases, nor exhibits any other form. This remarkable result suggests that quality is a function of quantity.” Simonton proposes an “equal-odds baseline,” which suggests that, once a person begins contributing original work to their field, every attempt has roughly equal potential for world-changing impact.
Get Better at Anything
Scott Young
In a rare interview with the Middle East Economic Survey, Al-Naimi said that Saudi production costs are no more than $5 per barrel, and that marginal costs of development are “at most” $10 per barrel. As 2014 drew to a close, estimates were that it cost U.S. frackers as much as five times that to get a barrel out. “Is it reasonable for a highly efficient producer to reduce output, while the producer of poor efficiency continues to produce?” asked Al-Naimi. “That is crooked logic. If I reduce, what happens to my market share? The price will go up and the Russians, the Brazilians, U.S. shale oil producers will take my share.” Al-Naimi and OPEC thus came to the decision to leave production levels where they were.
Saudi America
Bethany McLean
The Great Central Valley is drained by two principal rivers, one flowing south and the other north. They meet in the valley and discharge themselves together into San Francisco Bay. The north-flowing river is the San Joaquin. The south-flowing river is the Sacramento, with its tributary the Feather River, which is dammed to reserve the snowmelt of the Sierra Nevada, not only to flood the rice fields and irrigate the other crops of the valley but also to travel six hundred miles in a life-support tube that is taped to the nose of Los Angeles. Rivers with common deltas are rare in the world. It would be difficult to name more pairs of them than the Kennebec and the Androscoggin, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the Sacramento and the San Joaquin.
Assembling California
John McPhee
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