full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Alex Tabarrok: How ideas trump crises

Unscramble the Blue Letters

aglirht what about problems? What about a garet deopsrsien? Well let's take a look. Let's take a look at the Great Depression. Here is GDP per capita from 1900 to 1929. Now let's imagine that you were an economist in 1929, trying to forecast future growth for the United States, not knowing that the economy was about to go off a cfilf, not knowing that we were about to enter the greatest eoinmocc disaster certainly in the 20th century. What would you have predicted, not koniwng this? If you had based your prediction, your fsaeroct on 1900 to 1929 you'd have predicted something like this. If you'd been a little more optimistic — say, based upon the Roaring Twenties — you'd have said this. So what actually happened? We went off a cliff but we recovered. In fact in the second half of the 20th century growth was even higher than anything you would have predicted based upon the first half of the 20th century. So growth can wash away even what appears to be a great depression.

Open Cloze

_______ what about problems? What about a _____ __________? Well let's take a look. Let's take a look at the Great Depression. Here is GDP per capita from 1900 to 1929. Now let's imagine that you were an economist in 1929, trying to forecast future growth for the United States, not knowing that the economy was about to go off a _____, not knowing that we were about to enter the greatest ________ disaster certainly in the 20th century. What would you have predicted, not _______ this? If you had based your prediction, your ________ on 1900 to 1929 you'd have predicted something like this. If you'd been a little more optimistic — say, based upon the Roaring Twenties — you'd have said this. So what actually happened? We went off a cliff but we recovered. In fact in the second half of the 20th century growth was even higher than anything you would have predicted based upon the first half of the 20th century. So growth can wash away even what appears to be a great depression.

Solution

  1. depression
  2. alright
  3. economic
  4. cliff
  5. forecast
  6. great
  7. knowing

Original Text

Alright what about problems? What about a great depression? Well let's take a look. Let's take a look at the Great Depression. Here is GDP per capita from 1900 to 1929. Now let's imagine that you were an economist in 1929, trying to forecast future growth for the United States, not knowing that the economy was about to go off a cliff, not knowing that we were about to enter the greatest economic disaster certainly in the 20th century. What would you have predicted, not knowing this? If you had based your prediction, your forecast on 1900 to 1929 you'd have predicted something like this. If you'd been a little more optimistic — say, based upon the Roaring Twenties — you'd have said this. So what actually happened? We went off a cliff but we recovered. In fact in the second half of the 20th century growth was even higher than anything you would have predicted based upon the first half of the 20th century. So growth can wash away even what appears to be a great depression.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
united states 5
larger markets 4
education system 3
billion dollars 2
absolutely incredible 2
cutting edge 2
driving growth 2
drug treats 2
million people 2
markets increase 2
action movies 2
idea leader 2
kurzweilian terms 2
great depression 2
oil prices 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
larger markets increase 2

Important Words

  1. alright
  2. appears
  3. based
  4. capita
  5. century
  6. cliff
  7. depression
  8. disaster
  9. economic
  10. economist
  11. economy
  12. enter
  13. fact
  14. forecast
  15. future
  16. gdp
  17. great
  18. greatest
  19. growth
  20. happened
  21. higher
  22. imagine
  23. knowing
  24. optimistic
  25. predicted
  26. prediction
  27. problems
  28. recovered
  29. roaring
  30. states
  31. twenties
  32. united
  33. wash