United Airlines blew it--twice. First, when employees summoned the police to forcibly remove a passenger with a ticket and boarding pass to make room for a United employee. Second, when the CEO bungled the corporate response by making it appear that United was somehow the victim and the passenger the wrongdoer. The incident may have cost the company tens of millions of dollars in revenues and damage to its reputation.

In the months leading to the Presidential Election of 2012, Nate Silver of The New York Times correctly predicted the outcomes of both the Presidential and the individual Senate elections. Silver’s feat was all the more remarkable because some professional pundits and strategists made such a hash of their predictions. “How did Silver do it?” journalists often wondered. ​