Can You Hear Me Now?

Collecting data never sounded so sweet.  And it still doesn't.  The extraction of information from people for business purposes is reminiscent of a trip to the dentist.  The difference being the dentist comes to get you, and it's while you're eating dinner.  Marketing is in our eyes, stomachs, and most importantly our hearts. Yet we don't want it in our ears.  American consumers respond with hostility when they hear "it'll just take a second", especially by telephone, a contraption that's been pushed aside in favor of texts and emails, but still does the trick best for surveying .  This puts those who are genuinely trying to get some valuable information in a serious pickle, the sour kind.

The charm of telephone for collecting information is the amazing amount of information made available not in peoples words but in their voices.  While a picture may be worth a thousand words, a voice may be worth something there are no words for.  As a recently hired research associate who operates strictly over the phone, I've heard it loud and clear.  Peoples voices, and the tones they use, let a phone surveyor get what they want better than a filled in bubble ever could.  When someone cautiously answers a question and then finishes their sentence by making their voices higher, I don't dare let my pen hit the paper.  Confusion is one of the many things a voice can reveal that are worth knowing about someone you're collecting data from (especially when its the backbone of the product your selling).  Certainty, cooperativeness, authority, and attention are other natural byproducts of a vocal exchange, and a savvy surveyor knows how to leverage them.

From umm's to huh's, a live exchange is filled with signals that might make a surveyor repeat, skip, or rephrase a question.  Sometimes a surveyor will use his discretion and not even include certain results, suspicious the source was carelessly estimating or filling in for someone more in the know.  Unfortunately the revealing nature of the phone survey is not only its greatest strength but also its biggest weakness.  People may say that they believe in the importance of research and take pride in the information age, but often that attitude stops at the caller ID.  Some incentives to side step the panhandler like reputation of a phone surveyor include cash rewards.  However, with such an offer comes a biased sample of people attracted to cash rewards.  Randomness is important in statistics. Any time incentives are introduced to a sample, the results lose a sense of validity and genuineness.

The more we learn with our eyes and tell with our fingers, the less we can be sure we're hearing what's being said.  As the available amount of information increases exponentially, much of it is being lost between the lines. Voice communication will prove ever more valuable as we see the likes of social networking and search engine optimization crowd it out of the marketing game.  Information that comes from a persons mouth and not their keyboards is going to become as precious as ever.  Numbers and letters get the point across, but voices amplify the meaning.  Listen up.

Debt, all the cool kids are doing it.

Great summary of global debt
World Debt Guide : Owe Dear

It seems like everyone owes a lot of money.  Coupled with the fact that most of the first world is not growing as fast as it would like (or was projected to),  debt is the word of the day and it's here with interest.  Debt is often shown as % of GDP, and you wouldn't believe how popular triple digits are.  All the cool kids are doing it.

Greece's spending problems made it ask all its friends for help, but then it found out they weren't doing too good either.  Germany was alright, but fed up with being slowed down and looked to for handouts.  Germany definitely wasn't trying to give any change to Greece with Ireland, Spain, and Portugal already looking longingly at it.  America's debt almost made it go from AAA to AA rated, which is worse than when your favorite restaurant gets tagged with a "B" in the window from the health inspector.  In a country where credit cards are as ubiquitous as debt solution commercials, it's no surprise we owe a few friends a couple of dollars.  Actually we owe ourselves a couple of dollars too, in the form of domestically held bonds and transfer payments for the retiring baby boomers.

It seems like looking at debt is the best way to look at the global economic landscape, and that's a pretty scary observation.  But if I knew someone in debt, the last thing I would tell them to do is forget about it and treat themselves to a night on the town.  Admitting we have a problem is as cliche as it is a necessary first step.  The golden rule in economics as well as the backbone of ethics and morality goes something like, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".  A common caveat to this thinking is excluding those people who don't have a voice.  In this case literally, because those being most left out of the conversation are future generations.  Once they do get their voices, there is little doubt they will be using them to scream at Grandma and Grandpa for running up such a big tab at the last generation party.

Without being too insensitive, we need to get started before the lucky ones die.  As uncomfortable as it is to say and support, everyone needs to tighten their belts.  Even the elderly must take part in the readjustment process that will move America towards a stable equilibrium.  Making exceptions is an expensive gesture that is often not treated as such.  The reason such exceptions have become as customary as a tipping your waiter is because the person getting the bill hasn't shown up to dinner yet.

National Debt

July 4th is the perfect time for friends, family, and food.  Appreciating all the sacrifices that have been made and are being made in the name of our country is essential to the spirit of Independence Day.  The importance of which cannot be reiterated enough.  It isn't all we have to remember though.

Celebrating independence is a celebration of getting to play our own hands at the global poker table.  As a nation we are able to act of our own accord.  That being said, an independent nation with a largely dependent population shouldn't be called independent in the first place.  In the spirit of independence, we all should be concerned with, or at least aware of the current landscape of our country.  I like to look at economic indicators and pretty charts for this, but patriotism is a far more flexible calling

However you choose to leave your impression on this world or let it leave its impression on you, thinking about what you do to sustain and extend independence is a tradition that would surly be in the holiday spirit.  Troops do it by advancing our nations military endeavors.  Their hands on relationship with freedom is what we remember and honor them for.  Teachers do it by educating the population so it can enjoy the most fulfilling freedoms there are while being critical enough to be able to protect them.  Lawyers train to understand all the laws, while cops train to enforce them and politicians run to change them.  Builders give us a place to sleep while were independent, and firemen make sure its safe.  Entrepreneurs give us freedoms we never knew we could have and baby sitters watch their kids while they do it.

Independence day is a group project where some people seem, and sometimes are, much more important to it than others.  Just like in life, the role you take on is largely a reflection of the role you think you can have.  What advances independence is as up to interpretation as what should be done with it.  We all have a stake in independence and July 4th is a great time to reflect on how we can all protect it.  Happy Independence Day everyone.

Readers Digest

After cooking my 3 course dinner in 3 1/2 minutes, using my electric toothbrush that promises only a minute of scrubbing is needed, and waiting 4 minutes for an album to finish downloading because my internet was being slow, I laid back and opened The Economist.  Not too much later I checked my watch and couldn't believe my eyes.  A whole three minutes had passed and I was just getting to the bottom of the first page.

While everything else is moving along faster, and faster, the art of reading has kept its pace like a disciplined runner.  While the information you get is being hunted and gathered at an unprecedented rate, the mental digestion process hasn't changed a bit.  And like food, data spoils and is best eaten fresh.

When up to the minute information is just too fast for the "wait a minute" reader like myself, something needs to change.  I started skipping some articles in the publications I subscribe to recently, a practice I pledged to avoid.  Reading two week old economic indicators, and hearing about how Dominique Strass Kahn can get a little touchy for the fourth time in a row, I couldn't help but notice how so much information has such a short shelf life.  As new issue upon new issue piled up, I found myself rushing through articles like they were instructions to diffusing a ticking time bomb.  I was reading more, understanding less, and mispronouncing a lot of words in my head.  To my dismay, I would get to a new issue and find articles similarly crafted, and changed only in that they were more updated.  I had to question my approach and figure out a new way to read.

What I've begun to do is look at "Contents" pages of magazines I haven't gotten to and trying to have a more balanced reading diet.  I found in most cases that just reading an article from the latest issue did fairly well at covering all the preceding issues and was far more efficient.  Of course the unfortunate side of this is the missed anecdotes, unappreciated verbal flourishes, and undiscovered interpretations that come along with such a diet.  For someone who appreciates alliteration as much as apple pie, it's just a bit like missing out on dessert.

Data is coming out faster.  This doesn't only mean more of it is available, but also that more of it is pointless.  Some information is only worth it when it's fresh off the press or out of the proverbial oven.  Current events isn't always best read like a novel.  As dinners are getting zapped to pseudo-perfection in minutes, and movies streamed in seconds, the opportunity cost of old fashioned reading is sky-rocketing.  Not only can you do more than ever in the time that it takes to read a page on your favorite news site, but what you might be reading is going to spoil faster.  Like obesity became a bigger problem as food was hunted and gathered with new technology, so has information overload.  Similarly, as more unhealthy food options became available, data's fast food equivalent is out there and growing.   I'm trying different information diets to keep in shape and its a work in progress.  If you take a look, you might just find you're filling up on something lacking any nutritional value.

Heightened Expectations

     Congrats to the '11 Mavs for beating the dynamically unlovable Heat in 6 games.  I went to a bar with a few friends to watch and an argument about J.J Barea's height got about as much attention as LeBron's fourth quarter numbers this series.  The J.J dispute is not in the scope of this blog but a point that did get me thinking was the fact that he's listed at six feet tall all over the internet, and most importantly, on NBA.com.  I'm aware of the dramatic effect relativity can have on a fella, but J.J is about as six feet as Jason Terry's bicep tattoo is tactful.  Why the discrepancy on such an easily observable measurement?  We're talking the objective of the objective here. How does variation find its way into an utterly verifiable number?
     I read that athletes in the U.S are often measured with their shoes on. This leads to "shorter" European players standing above similarly listed U.S athletes and no, not just because no one gets the metric system over here.  The whole non standardized-ness of it all begs a question.  If we can dig up every detail about their past, speculate about their future, and bug them with pointless questions in the present, why can't we just know athletes heights?  The only economic metaphor I could draw would be a firm "cooking" their books to look better than they are or a credit rating agency inflating their ratings.  The difference is, when it comes to salary valuations of players who are already in the NBA, sport-metricicians are picking up PPG APG STL and RBD before HT and WT who don't even make tryouts.  If the owners don't inherently care about the heights of their players, the league doesn't benefit from shady statistics, and the fans would most likely just prefer the truth, maybe it's the players that turned the rule of the ruler into a democracy where everyone gets to pick their own height?  Eh, I doubt it; If I was J.J Barea I'd be proud as hell for every inch under six feet I was.  Congrats Barea, Nowitzki, Kidd, Cuban and the rest of the Dallas Squad.

Put Your Money Where Your Prophecy Is

44 minutes after the supposed end of the world, and I feel quite cheated.  Why do all the doomsday theorists get to take up valuable train advertising space, prime time news coverage, and undeserved space in the magazines and websites I read, without any expectations of accountability?  It's about time one of these movements is accompanied by legitimate stakes.  If judgment day is upon us, and you really want to let the world know, you could get attention by sparing yourself of all those worldy indulgences and giving them to me.  They won't matter pretty soon anyway right?  The end of the world doesn't seem like one of the harder things to convince people of if you really are sure of it yourself.  Instead of relying on the embarrassment of being wrong to dissuade people from attaching themselves to these wasteful causes, I'd like to see them challenged.  Sticking to their guns equates to just spouting rhetoric but a serious commitment that reflects the seriousness of their claim would be more appropriate.

Are the ads in the train that quote the bible and propose the end is near persuasive or informational?  I felt a bit ashamed of my city and the ad placement system in the subways when on my way home from Webster Hall at 4am I had to sit across from a propaganda-esque poster riddled with melodramatic biblical quotes and a referral to familyradio.com or some other similarly disturbing title.  Is this add trying to legitimize the claim that the world is over by showing me people were willing to spend money on designing and placing an ad?  That seems logically flawed since if it really was the end of the world, who cares about the money. 

Were they trying to convince me of the end so that I could tie up my loose ends with god on the ride home?  Considering I just came from a show by a group named Zed's Dead performing a genre of music where "filthy" is the head-honcho of compliments, there wasn't much salvation to be found on this hazy ride home.  Furthermore, my only company on the train was a 20 something year old passed out, who intermittently threw up on himself and forced me to change seats several times even though I was on the other end of the train because of the tributaries formed by what he had to drink that night and the capricious movements of the Q train.  I alerted the police to help out my faded fellow passenger when I got to my station. Maybe that's what the poster was encouraging, but I doubt it.

If those ad's worked, and got people to go to the links they showed, and increased revenue of those companies, SHAME ON THEM!  It isn't ethical to increase traffic in hope of future gains by claiming there won't be anymore traffic, hope, future, or gains.  It's a win-win for them and a lose-lose for me.  They get a completely unjustifiable amount of attention that benefits them in a long-run that they said wouldn't exist.  As Keynes said, "In the long-run we're all dead".  Apparently if you tell everyone their dead in the short run, you don't have to worry about the long run.

Sexy and Safe for Work

Chart Porn is a site I just ran into and I'm feeling pretty lucky.  The concept is simple, a myriad of graphical representations of....just about anything.  If you plan on spending hours interwebing or don't but know you're going to anyway, this is the kind of eye candy you can bring home to mom.


I found out about Axis Maps, a cartography company with character.  Word on the street is they're busy making maps of major metropolitan areas strictly out of the words on the street.

  

 

Next I checked out Human Development Index data presented in an imaginative new way.  You can pick a country and have a tree-like graphic generated where the shades and sizes of the branches have statistical significance.  This tool had me daydreaming about the potential of visual stimulation and graphic transmission of information in education. I became familiar with the HDI during a semester in an economics growth and development course. This fresh spin on it has me drawing new conclusions and seeing new relationships.  It makes me think, imagine what tools like this could do to classrooms of kids who are curious but just want something a little more like TV.

I got to study the most extensive collection of super-powers since ever.  This poster resembles something you would see in a chem book more than a comic book.  Which of your hobbies would you like to see detailed and laid out like this?  How would you start the process?  Would you have to get someone with super powers to do it for you?  I think this was a daunting task that was well done and well worth it.

Sneak a better peak

Besides being wonderfully random and catered to the less than average attention span, this site has serious per-second browsing value.  Not only do the charts and graphs tell the sort of things about the world that can help you be that well-rounded person you've always wanted to be, but they remind us of the importance of organization and presentation.  I believe there is vast amount of valuable new information that can only be found in original and unique presentations of the old information our eyes and ears have grown weary of.  A high exposure to alternative methods of painting ideas might just be the best way of getting people to see your picture.

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Lying Through Her Teeth

            I just saw an advertisement for a teeth whitening product.  In an overly enthusiastic manner a woman said something along the lines of, "and the only reason we can give a free sample is because we know you'll love our product!"  Ever after I saw the inflated shipping charge that might explain it all, I was still unsettled by what I had just heard.
            Two terms I got familiar with earlier today while doing industrial organization work came to mind.  The things we buy can be categorized as either 'shopping' or 'convenience' goods.  Shopping goods are relatively expensive purchases like washing machines or beds that are made infrequently.  These are often classified as durable goods, another way of saying you're stuck with them.  Naturally characteristics like speed, color, fashion-ability, and quality are valued more for shopping goods.  Convenience goods are things you buy regularly and make up a small fraction of your total spending, like toilet paper. Although, I'd  have to say referring to it as a 'convenience' is selling toilet paper a little short.
    Whitening systems from my understanding are actually quite expensive and take a long time to see results. However, they are regularly sold in multiple small parts that you have to buy many of over time. Basically this is a shopping good being sold as a convenience good.  This is a good part of that funny feeling I got while the bad actress on T.V was telling me why her company was offering a $39.95 free sample.
           Experience goods and search goods are another way of classifying the things you buy.  Shoes for example, are search goods because you get to try them on in the store and know exactly what you're buying.  Store brand chili however, you'll have to stomach the risk and buy to find out if its any good. That's why chili would be considered an experience good.  Teeth whitening devices don't claim to work overnight and are a classic example of an experience good.  So why else did that teeth whitening commercial's claim leave a bad taste in my mouth? I realized you can't tell if the product works from just the free sample.  The company wouldn't count on people liking a sample of a product they don't even get to see work.  Maybe economies of scale or a loss leader strategy (selling at a loss to profit on likely subsequent purchases) is really why the company gives free samples.  I don't know for sure, but I'm not buying what she was saying or selling.

Ode to the Margin

Oh margin
Its how I know what I'm charging
When I make my decision
It's the the margin I envision
Oh margin

Oh margin
Credit where credits due
That because of you
Ill know who to give the job to
When A makes 3 widgets
and B only makes 2
Oh margin

Oh margin
When a friend wants one more
Because hes sure that he'll score
Ill remind him hes had a dozen
And that she might be his cousin
He'll insist to stay
And Ill call it a day
But when he calls in the morning
Ill know what to say
You didn't need that last drink
Don't you know how to think?
How good was the last?
Don't you remember the past?
When five was alive
And six was in the mix
Seven was heaven
And eight was great
Nine was fine
And ten is when to end
Marginal cost equals lost
But listen you did not
And eleven was a shot

Now at a dozen
Doing a fair share of buzzin
You stand outside the door
Of said maybe cousin

There in your hand
Is unlucky thirteen
And you drank it down quick
Because you weren't so keen

So here's my advice
I wont say it twice
The beers not such a bargain
When its your cousins room that you barge in
You got to think at the margin
Oh margin