Each year on this blog I have tackled this question, and here are the three previous guides:

–Gifts for economists, 2008

–Gifts for economists, 2009

–Gifts for economists, 2010

You should check out those lists, which are still full of good ideas that I do not wish to repeat here (it gets boring to recommend a subscription to the Economist every year).

So this year I have come up with completely different set of gifts. And for added fun, these gifts all fall under a common theme.

The theme–which is naturally economically related–is this: all the gifts are about value. You won’t find anything flashy or sexy here; just solid items that are either good buys or related to the subject of value. So enjoy these gifts that are all practical and should be useful to your economics-minded friends.

For the swimmer

Prescription swim goggles are an excellent purchase for anyone you know that has contacts or glasses and swims. I can personally say getting prescription swim goggles was the best $20 I spent all year. I can now see clearly under water and really appreciate swimming a lot more. But that’s not the only reason I got them.

In the past, I used to wear contacts while swimming. I recently learned this is not a good idea as it can lead to eye infections. So I decided to buy prescription swim goggles and give them a try. I was extremely pleased at how well they work, and I’m a bit ashamed I didn’t get them earlier.

The brand I have used is Speedo Vanquisher optical swim goggles. The only part that’s not intuitive when ordering is that “size” refers to your prescription, so getting a 4.0 size really means you’re buying a -4.0 prescription (or “diopter” as the product description says).

Footwear

Bowling shoes are another practical accessory that are cheap and have a great value. For about $30, you can buy a decent pair of bowling shoes and avoid smelly rentals. Plus, with rentals costing around $3, you’ll make your money back in just a few trips.

I’ve had my bowling shoes for over 10 years and they are in great condition. I once did a geeky calculation that my bowling shoes have returned over a 33 percent annual return for 10 years–better than most equity investments in the same period!

Negotiating skills

Negotiauctions is an excellent book that I am going through right now. The book is about deal-making and how the process is often somewhere between a negotiation and an auction. The book covers topics like when you should use an auction vs negotiating process, and if you choose an auction, what type of auction might be best.

The book is one of the best business books I have read recently. The one caveat is that it helps to have some knowledge about auction theory and business negotiating for the examples and case studies to be meaningful. The book is written by Professor Guhan Subramanian, who is, the book’s website mentions “the only person in the history of Harvard University to hold tenured appointments at both Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School.”

Intro to game theory:

Gametheory101 is an e-book about game theory, and at just $2.99, it’s a great value. The book covers the basics of game theory, including the Prisoner’s Dilemma, mixed strategy equilibrium, and it also covers extensive form games (game trees) in which players move in sequence, like the ultimatum game.

There are tons of diagrams and lengthy discussions to help you understand the concepts. It’s a book you should definitely check out. For more about it, read my interview with the author William Spaniel.

For the baseball fan:

Moneyball is a book that tells the story of how the Oakland A’s were able to be competitive with one of the lowest payrolls in baseball. The book is a fun read for any baseball or economics fan, as it describes how the A’s used statistics to  find undervalued players and improve scouting/trades.

I have yet to see the movie, which was well received and stars Brad Pitt. Sony is releasing the movie in Blu-Ray/DVD on January 10, but they are also selling it earlier in an electronic version for purchase on December 22.

For the TV watcher:

Netflix is not as cheap as it used to be, I still believe it delivers great value with shows like Mad Men and Arrested Development.

I know a lot of people still hate Netflix for its price hike and other odd moves recently. A decent alternative (though by no means equal alternative) is to get an Amazon Prime membership and watch the free videos at the Prime eligible Amazon Instant library. The selection is steadily increasing, as the library currently has shows like the PBS NOVA series of documentaries and one of my personal favorites, a cartoon series called Home Movies.

Shameless self-promotion:

I just wanted to mention one more thing. I suddenly realized I have not sent out a Mind Your Decisions newsletter in a really long time (apologies, I honestly just forgot about it).

I am sending out a newsletter this Sunday that will include a fun logic puzzle not posted on the site. If you’d like to sign up, follow this link and sign up: Mind Your Decisions newsletter

The newsletter is completely free and just a fun thing I do to stay in touch with readers–so I hope it qualifies as a good value as well

I’m sure there are good ideas I missed. Please add your economic themed suggestions in the comments below.

Most of us, however, prefer to sit somewhere in the middle, and I would argue there are good reasons for that. This article is about exploring the notion of an optimal movie theater seat and suggesting an answer based on specific criteria.

So what exactly makes a movie theater seat good? And which seats provide the best viewing experience?

I will explain the criteria first. If you just want the answer, skip ahead to the last paragraph.

The theory of a best theater seat

It came as a surprise to me, but people have been thinking about the idea of a best theater seat for nearly 200 years, well pre-dating movie theaters.

The first article on sightlines came in 1838 when Scottish engineer John Scott Russell wrote “Treatise on Sightlines and Seating” (see detailed history here). The article talked about the concept of a sightline, which is the line-of-sight between a patron and the performance. The article explained that good seats had superior sightlines, and bad seats had inferior sightlines because the seats were either too far forward or too far back. The article is still considered a definitive treatment of sightlines for modern theaters, and the principles became applied at the acoustically exceptional Emery Theater in Cincinnati.

Since 1838, several treatises and articles have appeared on the theory of sightlines. The one most relevant to this article came in 1990 when the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers surveying existing literature and published cinema standards with the goal that every theater goer could see movies properly.

The guidelines offer two major criteria for sightlines described below. I will supplement this discussion with another criteria for sound experience.

Criteria 1: no neck strain

I feel the most basic guideline is about making sure the viewing angle is comfortable. If you sit too close to a movie screen, you are required to look up at a painful angle of elevation for hours, and that inevitably leads to neck strain.

The SMPTE guideline says the maximum viewer sightline to the top of the screen should be less than 35 degrees, as sketched below.

In theory, theaters are supposed to follow this guideline and not puts seats too close to the screen. But they often do put seats too close, as some theaters have vertical sightlines in their front row of up to 60 degrees, with the average around 42 degrees.

(On slight tangent, this poor design actually resulted in several lawsuits. The issue was that many wheelchair seats were placed in the front of movie theaters with horrible viewing angles. The placement of wheelchair seats was argued to be in violation of equal access under the American Disabilities Act, and eventually led to some changes–see this pdf for more details.)

To return to the point, this guideline implies the best seat in the theater is not in the front section but rather further in the back.

Criteria 2: see a big picture

The last point shows why it is not a good idea to sit all way in the front. But are there seats that are too far back?

Clearly there can be. To put it in simplistic terms, the whole point of watching a movie on the big screen is that you get to see a big screen.

There is another SMPTE guideline that specifies how large a screen should appear to viewers. The guideline here is the screen should at least have a horizontal viewing angle of 36 degrees, a standard adopted by THX for its certified movie theaters.

Here is a sketch of the guideline:

Again, movie theaters are supposed to follow this standard, but you can bet some theaters have back rows that are too far away.

To get a “bigger than life” movie experience, this guideline implies it is best to move at least a few rows forward from the back row to get a decent horizontal viewing angle.

Criteria 3: have excellent sound quality

The above criteria were all about the image quality. But sound is often as important to a movie experience as is the image in the viewing experience, particularly in action films.

Where is the best sound in a theater?

Again, this is going to be a debatable question. But there is some reason to say specific seats provide a quality sound experience.

From what I could find, there is a tradition in how movie theaters are calibrated. The documents I found say that movie cinemas are often calibrated for the center seat in the row that is 2/3 of the distance from the screen to the back of the theater. (The best I could find to corroborate this is this engineering document from JBL).

To be even more precise, the article suggests that it is best to sit slightly off-center to enhance the surround sound effect.

This criteria implies it is best to sit near the row that is 2/3 of the way from the screen to the back of the theater, and possibly slightly off-center.

Suggested best seats

So what do all these criteria mean in the end?

We can put all these criteria to come up with the following diagram of the best seats:

image edited from Mike Lewis

I suggest these seats satisfay all the criteria outlined above.

First, these seats clearly are far back enough to avoid neck strain. Second, they are nearly 2/3 of the way from the back, so one expects good sound. Finally, seats should provide an excellent horizontal viewing angle.

To see why, we can use a bit of trigonometry. Assuming the back row is at a 36 degree viewing angle, we can calculate the viewing angles for seats in rows that are halfway and two-thirds of the way from the screen to the back. As diagrammed below, these seats have viewing angles of roughly 50 to 65 degrees, which can give a big screen effect.

To add a bit of social proof to this argument in closing, I went to Fandango and looked for theaters with reserved seating to see which seats filled up first. In one random example at the AMC CityWalk Stadium 19 in Universal City, CA, I found that some seats tend to sell out first–precisely the prime seats described above. Here is a picture for the prime seats.

I doubt this article will settle arguments as people have strong seating preferences that cannot be changed. But at least you will know where to sit if you want a recommended ideal movie experience. Enjoy.

One day you relax and have a can of Coke, adding an extra 140 calories to your intake.

A few hours later you feel guilty and hop on the treadmill. You run until the calories burned reads 140 calories.

Will the exercise net out the extra calories you just ate? Why or why not?

(Assume the treadmill calorie count is accurate).

Calories burned vs net calories burned

I am not a health professional, but speaking mathematically I can say the calories do not net out.

The reason is the following: most treadmill calorie counts are TOTAL calories burned. They include not just calories from running, but also the amount of calories burned by your base metabolic rate–the calories you would have burned if you had just sat around on the couch.

As exercise for weight loss is about burning extra calories, we are interested in the marginal calories burned.

Basal metabolic rate

At the risk of being overly focused on the numbers, you can use this calculator to find your basal metabolic rate:

Discovery Health calculator: http://health.discovery.com/centers/heart/basal/basal.html

Find your basal metabolic rate based on your gender, weight, and height. Then you divide by 24 to see how much you are burning per hour in a day when you are just resting.

For example, if your basal metabolic rate is 1800, then that means you are burning 75 calories an hour (1800/24). (This might vary depending on time of day or if you are sleeping, so take this number as an approximation)

Treadmill calories burned

Now let’s return to the treadmill. Suppose you walk for half an hour and the treadmill says you have burned 140. But you know that includes your basal metabolic rate of burning calories. If you had sat around, you would have burned about 38 calories.

That means you only burn an extra 102 calories from the exercise–not enough to make up for the 140 calories from Coke.

Don’t take this too seriously

These are all approximations and I am sure health issues are more complicated. I am definitely ignoring a lot of biochemistry going on and I’ll be honest about that. I’m sure someone can point flaws in my argument or perhaps point out some useful diet/exercise resources.

Still, I think it’s a good idea to realize exercise calorie numbers are often inflated. Just as a dollar saved is better than a dollar earned (because of taxes), this article shows how it can be the case mathematically that a calorie not eaten is better than a calorie burned.

This tip comes just in time for the weekend.

I read about the trick on Bundle, a great personal finance site. This article points out how you can possibly get more alcoholic drinks in bars, if you say the right words. Here are the details:

The key to a bigger drink: Order by the short glass

Is it too early to start the weekend? Whenever you belly up to the bar next, remember this key phrase: “In a tumbler.” It’s not a secret bartender code that will get you a bottle of Cristal on the house, but ordering your drink in a shorter, wider glass will get you a more generous pour.

Here’s why: according to researchers at Georgia Tech and Cornell, when people judge volume, they pay attention to how tall things are, but don’t compensate for width. In their study . . . researchers found that even the experienced bartenders overpoured by 20.5 percent when they they were serving in short, wide glasses than when they were serving in taller, narrower ones. [emphasis mine]

Granted, this is not going to work in every bar. I have been to places where they measure each drink by shot glasses and asking for a shorter glass is fruitless.

Still, there are numerous times I am in busy bars where bartenders just eyeball drink measurements, and this tip can definitely come in handy.

The 2005 study referenced above was notably corroborated in 2010 by a British scientist. His study found that bartenders poured 26 percent more alcohol in fat and short glasses tumblers compared to skinny and tall high ball glasses.

Cheers to that.

I usually plan my museum visit in advance and then spend a few hours enjoying all the exhibits.

But occasionally I am in a rush when I have a busy travel schedule. I might only have an hour or two of downtime in an afternoon when I hit up a museum.

What’s the best strategy in that case? What’s the best way to visit a museum quickly, but make sure you see all of the important exhibits?

I went through a few ideas before I came upon a tip that works very well.

[Also: here is a link for the answer to the Monday gold bar puzzle. Going forward, I will just post a solution with the puzzle--friends tell me this is preferred]

Ideas that don’t work

Unfortunately I did not come across my idea right away. Here are a few methods I tried that failed me.

Using museum map

If I made a museum map, I would definitely include a section of “notable pieces” to help visitors locate the best stuff. But I have yet to find a museum that does this. Usually they only have information about special exhibits or maybe one or two of the most famous pieces. Otherwise the maps just show the floor layouts and collection names.

Asking museum staff

You would think a museum staff member could help plan a quick tour. The problem is some people tend to know very little about the art (a job is a job) while others are way too into the art and they want you to visit everything.

You might find a good staff member, but I would not rely on it.

My tip: visit the museum gift shop to figure out the best pieces

It struck me one day: museum gift shops are bound to display the most popular and important pieces of a museum.

If you get lucky, there might be a book that talks about the museum’s important works.

But my tried and tested trick for American museums is this: find the section where they sell postcards. The postcards showcase the museums most popular works, and it is very easy to browse through all of them quickly.

I use the postcards to make a mental list of the pieces I absolutely must see. I then go to a staff member and ask where these pieces are located in the museum.

And viola, I have a quick route of all the best exhibits in the museum. And it saves a lot of the time compared to walking and discovering pieces by browsing.

This may not be the ideal way to visit a museum, but it is definitely an efficient method to create a targeted one-hour tour.