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From the Ted Talk by Adam Davidson: What we learned from teetering on the fiscal cliff

Unscramble the Blue Letters

And in fact, there's this other group of ppleoe who are not as ddeiivd as people might think, and that group is economists. I talk to a lot of encotiomss, and back in the '70s and '80s it was ugly being an economist. You were in what they called the saltwater camp, meaning Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, or you were in the freshwater camp, University of Chicago, University of Rochester. You were a free market capitalist economist or you were a Keynesian liberal economist, and these people didn't go to each other's weddings, they snubbed each other at conferences. It's still ugly to this day, but in my experience, it is really, really hard to find an economist under 40 who still has that kind of way of seeing the wlrod. The vast majority of economists — it is so uncool to call yourself an ideologue of either camp. The phrase that you want, if you're a graduate student or a podotsc or you're a professor, a 38-year-old economics professor, is, "I'm an empiricist. I go by the data." And the data is very claer. None of these major theories have been completely sfsucuecsl. The 20th century, the last hundred years, is riddled with disastrous examples of tiems that one school or the other tried to explain the past or predict the future and just did an awful, afuwl job, so the economics pifssoeorn has aiqcreud some degere of mostedy. They still are an awfully arrogant group of people, I will assure you, but they're now arrogant about their impartiality, and they, too, see a tremendous range of potential oumotecs.

Open Cloze

And in fact, there's this other group of ______ who are not as _______ as people might think, and that group is economists. I talk to a lot of __________, and back in the '70s and '80s it was ugly being an economist. You were in what they called the saltwater camp, meaning Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, or you were in the freshwater camp, University of Chicago, University of Rochester. You were a free market capitalist economist or you were a Keynesian liberal economist, and these people didn't go to each other's weddings, they snubbed each other at conferences. It's still ugly to this day, but in my experience, it is really, really hard to find an economist under 40 who still has that kind of way of seeing the _____. The vast majority of economists — it is so uncool to call yourself an ideologue of either camp. The phrase that you want, if you're a graduate student or a _______ or you're a professor, a 38-year-old economics professor, is, "I'm an empiricist. I go by the data." And the data is very _____. None of these major theories have been completely __________. The 20th century, the last hundred years, is riddled with disastrous examples of _____ that one school or the other tried to explain the past or predict the future and just did an awful, _____ job, so the economics __________ has ________ some ______ of _______. They still are an awfully arrogant group of people, I will assure you, but they're now arrogant about their impartiality, and they, too, see a tremendous range of potential ________.

Solution

  1. profession
  2. awful
  3. world
  4. acquired
  5. economists
  6. divided
  7. modesty
  8. people
  9. times
  10. successful
  11. clear
  12. outcomes
  13. degree
  14. postdoc

Original Text

And in fact, there's this other group of people who are not as divided as people might think, and that group is economists. I talk to a lot of economists, and back in the '70s and '80s it was ugly being an economist. You were in what they called the saltwater camp, meaning Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, or you were in the freshwater camp, University of Chicago, University of Rochester. You were a free market capitalist economist or you were a Keynesian liberal economist, and these people didn't go to each other's weddings, they snubbed each other at conferences. It's still ugly to this day, but in my experience, it is really, really hard to find an economist under 40 who still has that kind of way of seeing the world. The vast majority of economists — it is so uncool to call yourself an ideologue of either camp. The phrase that you want, if you're a graduate student or a postdoc or you're a professor, a 38-year-old economics professor, is, "I'm an empiricist. I go by the data." And the data is very clear. None of these major theories have been completely successful. The 20th century, the last hundred years, is riddled with disastrous examples of times that one school or the other tried to explain the past or predict the future and just did an awful, awful job, so the economics profession has acquired some degree of modesty. They still are an awfully arrogant group of people, I will assure you, but they're now arrogant about their impartiality, and they, too, see a tremendous range of potential outcomes.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
american people 4
social security 3
vast majority 3
fiscal cliff 2
percent positive 2
american history 2
alexander hamilton 2
thomas jefferson 2
inevitable problem 2
light blue 2
blue line 2
government spends 2
raise taxes 2
worst kind 2
productive areas 2
pragmatic centrists 2
military defense 2
defense spending 2
small group 2
gold standard 2

ngrams of length 3

collocation frequency
military defense spending 2

Important Words

  1. acquired
  2. arrogant
  3. assure
  4. awful
  5. berkeley
  6. call
  7. called
  8. camp
  9. capitalist
  10. century
  11. chicago
  12. clear
  13. completely
  14. conferences
  15. data
  16. day
  17. degree
  18. disastrous
  19. divided
  20. economics
  21. economist
  22. economists
  23. empiricist
  24. examples
  25. experience
  26. explain
  27. fact
  28. find
  29. free
  30. freshwater
  31. future
  32. graduate
  33. group
  34. hard
  35. harvard
  36. ideologue
  37. impartiality
  38. job
  39. keynesian
  40. kind
  41. liberal
  42. lot
  43. major
  44. majority
  45. market
  46. meaning
  47. mit
  48. modesty
  49. outcomes
  50. people
  51. phrase
  52. postdoc
  53. potential
  54. predict
  55. princeton
  56. profession
  57. professor
  58. range
  59. riddled
  60. rochester
  61. saltwater
  62. school
  63. snubbed
  64. stanford
  65. student
  66. successful
  67. talk
  68. theories
  69. times
  70. tremendous
  71. ugly
  72. uncool
  73. university
  74. vast
  75. weddings
  76. world
  77. years