Take a trip to a nearby grocery store. Working with classmates, try to locate the brand and item that offer the greatest number of varieties (e.g., the various scents of Dawn dishwashing liquid; flavors of Jell-O; etc.). Gather data for at least 20-30 brands/items across the store. Then, organize and analyze the data. Is there greater variety available in certain categories (e.g., cereal vs. ice cream vs. bread)? Malcolm Gladwell has been a staff writer with The New Yorker magazine since 1996. His 1999 profile of Ron Popeil won a National Magazine Award, and in 2005 he was named one of Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People. He is the author of four books, "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference," (2000) , "Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking" (2005), and "Outliers: The Story of Success" (2008) all of which were number one New York Times best sellers. Moskowitz Jacobs Inc: Food and Beverage Articles and Research Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -- and how we feel about the choices we make. At TEDGlobal, she talks about both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions. See her talk on the art of choosing.

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