A few minutes ago, I made up my mind to toss a coin to decide whether or not to leave my wife. It was Steve Levitt's idea.
I should explain that Levitt, an economist most famous for co- writing Freakonomics, would regard that coin toss as noise in his data. In collaboration with John List, a fellow professor at the University of Chicago, Levitt is offering the blessed release of the coin to people everywhere who cannot decide whether to quit their jobs, leave their partners, have children, move cities, quit drinking or even get tattoos. It's all in the name of social science.
Here's how the research project works. If you're having trouble with one of life's big choices, you sign up at FreakonomicsExperiments.com, choose your dilemma, fill in a short survey, promise to abide by the coin's decision, and the website will flip the coin for you. Later, the research team will email a survey to ask whether you followed the coin's advice and how things are working out.