Most Active Stories Thu January 5, 2012 How A Computer Scientist
Tried To Save Greece Originally published on Mon May 7, 2012
10:13 am It's like a bad joke. Why did the Greek government
borrow so much money? Because it couldn't get its own citizens
to pay taxes. The Greek government estimates that one third of
taxes owed never get paid. And apparently it was far easier to
borrow money even at outrageous rates than to make Greeks pay
what they owe. So in 2009, the Greek finance ministry called in
an unlikely hero: A methodical, computer science professor at
Athens University, Diomidis Spinellis. Spinellis tackled the
problems like it was programming challenge. He made something
called a mind map. A mind map looks like a tree, and it maps how
your brain works. And Spinellis's mind map illustrated in a
precise, clean manner why Greece is missing so much of its tax
revenue. First on the mind map. Locate the tax evaders, he
thought, and improve tax collection. It should be easy, because
wherever he looked in the d