Chance News 49

Forsooths

Steven J. Dubner of the New York Times writes about Bernice Geiger, a person who "never took vacations" for fear of her embezzlement being discovered by a fill-in employee; she "was arrested in 1961 for embezzling more than $2 million over the course of many years." Eventually, "after prison Geiger went to work for a banking oversight agency to help stop embezzlement."

"Her biggest contribution: looking for employees who failed to take vacation. This simple metric turned out to have strong predictive power in stopping embezzlement."

Paul A.