Where this was said
The Reveal: Pollution Scores and Skeptical Experts
At 38:10 · chapter starts 30:00
When Dubner reveals that pollution may explain the competition results, Levitt and Duckworth are genuinely surprised. New York had 23.4 micrograms per cubic meter that day; Philadelphia had 24.6; Chicago just 8.7. Linos's model predicts that playing on a high-pollution day shifts your percentile ranking by about 6 points — meaning Dubner and Duckworth, on cleaner-air days, might have been right up there with Levitt. [1] — Steve Levitt "I would say it feels like a 1 in terms of likelihood of being true. And if true, a 10 in terms of importance." 38:10 Levitt's reaction is the episode's funniest: he gives the finding a '1 out of 10' chance of being true, but says if it is true, it deserves a '10 out of 10' for importance. Duckworth, ever the scientist, declines to rate it without reading the paper. The exchange perfectly dramatizes the gap between intuitive skepticism and the weight of the empirical evidence to come.
Stephen Dubner secretly set up a Lumosity competition between Steve Levitt and Angela Duckworth to test whether pollution levels explained their scores. Levitt hit the 92nd percentile — on a day when Chicago's air was clean. New York and Philadelphia? 23 and 24 micrograms of particulate matter.
