Archive for category Consumer behavior
Tailgaters not put off by center high mounted stop lamps
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior, pop on September 12, 2013
According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) nearly a third of all crashes are rear-enders. So, when an experiment by psychologist John Voevodsky in 1974 found that San Francisco taxis equipped with a third brake light suffered 60.6% fewer rear-end collisions, it got the attention of the NHTSA. After replicating these results on a larger scale, they required center high mounted stop lamps (CHMSL) on all new cars in 1986. However, recent studies show a reduction in accidents of only 5%!*
I suppose drivers now are too busy texting to be deterred by CHMSL. ; ) But now Ford is experimenting on wirelessly warning those following when a driver puts the brakes on. See more details here. I suggest it set an alarm off on cell phones too—similar to wireless emergency alerts.
But the only real solution to rear-end collisions would be a system that automatically reduces speed on serial tailgaters. They are a menace to society in my opinion. Meantime let’s hope our highway patrols do what these cops did on California’s freeways.
*(Thanks to University of Minnesota Professor Sanford Weisberg of the School of Statistics for bringing this to my attention in his seminar today.)
Little correlation between pay and how meaningful you find your work
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior, pop, Uncategorized, Wellness on September 1, 2013
The August 26 issue of Business Week features this chart on median salary versus job meaning developed by salary comparison site PayScale. See if your profession is listed and, if so, how your colleagues rated their work.
I find it interesting that one of the lowest paying jobs—water treatment plant operator—came in at 100 percent self-rating of high job meaning. On the other hand, a securities trader makes twice the pay but only 14 percent felt their work meant much.
Neurosurgeons come out tops on both counts—salary and meaningfulness. That takes brains getting into a position like this. ; )
One of the least-paying jobs listed by PayScale is gas station attendant—it is also, evidently, nearly completely meaningless. It seems that a person stuck with this work would do well by becoming a dog kennel worker: The pay is about the same but carers for canines rates their job at 64% on the meaningful scale. My pet Penny (pictured sharing water with my grandson) approves. : )
Mind over matter—scale malfunction leads to temporary euphoria
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior on May 26, 2013
I’ve diligently recorded my weight every several days for some years now. The short-term variation always astounds me—going up and down by a number of pounds from one week to the next. However, on average month-by-month my weight remains surprisingly stable. Unfortunately the trend over years is very slightly, but significantly, upwards. Thus my battle against the bulge continues.
A few weeks ago I stepped up for a weighing and received a pleasant surprise: It seemed that I’d dropped 10 pounds during a five-day business trip. Although deep down I knew this could not be, I indulged myself for the day with the thought that something magical had whisked away this weight. Then after getting home from work I got back down to earth by discovering that the base of the scale had got off kilter. I mentioned this to my wife and daughter. It was funny seeing them being so crestfallen—they also were hanging on to the belief in a mysterious, but real reduction.
I suppose all this supports the use of control charting* for filtering out common-cause variability (not worth reacting to) from statistically-significant process upsets (special causes that merit attention). At least that’s what my logical side says. On the other hand, it was fun to believe for some hours in supernatural forces. Ignorance can be bliss!
*(See this detailing posted by the George Mason University College of Health and Human Services.)
Correlation of price of wine with the fineness of its taste–an absurd example
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior on December 22, 2012
Behavioral Economics Professor Dan Ariely of Duke University provides an illuminating and humorous example of irrational valuation in his advice column today for Wall Street Journal. It seems that this Christmas holiday weekend may be ruined for a couple who took advantage of a buy-one-get-one-free (BOGO) sale on a fine wine. Actually they paid $17 for one bottle and a nickel ($0.05) for the other. They asked Professor Ariely to help them escape a terrible dilemma: For the holiday party would it be OK to bring the cheap wine? Ha ha!
I hope that for the coming year all of you readers of StatsMadeEasy do not get hung up spurious issues like this relating to correlation and causation or any other statistical kerfuffles. Happy Holidays and New Year!
PS. I leave you with this toast to 2013–a picture taken last week during my tour of a winery in the Colchagua Valley south of Santiago, Chile. Cheers!
It’s the letter of the law: Stand down with Calibri
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior, Graphics, Uncategorized on August 17, 2012
Twenty years ago or so I cajoled the advertising rep from R&D Magazine into lending me a binder filled with several inches of ‘white papers’ of the publisher’s research on readership. Their data came primarily from A/B (split) testing—not very sophisticated but effective for simple comparisons. One question I resolved was whether to use serif or sans serif font. The research showed significant advantages to headlines being san serif, such as Arial font, and text in serif—for example, Times New Roman. I’ve stuck with that ever since,* except for the fonts themselves changing over to Calibri and Cambria—the defaults in current versions of Microsoft Office software.
However, now I am set back by this news from Wall Street Journal that Calibri comes up short—30 percent to be precise—versus Arial and other common fonts, at least so far as the State of Michigan is concerned. The inventor of Calibri, Lucas de Groot, justifies his type being smaller because of its high readability per square inch. Although this seems plausible to me, I would like to see the research supporting this assertion.
For an interesting detailing of fonts—serif versus san serif and neo-grotesque versus humanist—see this blog by Laurie Israel Think.
*For writings that will likely be read in printed form, that is. Having seen research like this recent study from the JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY, I believe that words written in a sans serif font provide a significant advantage for messages read on computer screens, such as blogs and email. Thus for these purposes I prefer using Calibri exclusively—ditto for presentations projected on screen, for example—using Powerpoint.
Irish Times says “serious issue settled” — Guinness does indeed travel badly
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior, Uncategorized on June 9, 2012
Lab Times author Thirsty O’Leary provides this summary of a scientific study by Liam Glynn, et al, that proves Guinness beer does not travel well. Some say it’s a conspiracy of the Irish—them drawing off the cream from the barrel. Although Guinness is not my cup of tea, I admire the work that went into this experiment. These zealots for zymurgy went all out! And, as those of use students ; ) of stats know, Guinness goes down well with quantitative research of this sort.*
“Each pint is like a child. You have to mind it through the entire process.”
— Fergal Murray, Guinness brew master
*See Guinnessometrics: Saving Science and Statistics With Beer
High rollers beat the lottery odds
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior on April 2, 2012
The $640 million jackpot in the Mega Millions lottery Friday night created a huge buzz. Unfortunately this fizzled out for all but the three big winners in Illinois, Kansas, and Maryland. Even we analytical types get swept up in the frenzy, seeing as how the money sunk in prior drawings brings the expected value over 100 percent. Yes, the odds of 1 in 176,000,000 remain daunting, but it sure is fun to have a few numbers to play with.
The really gutsy lottery wonks focus on other games where situations arise that make huge bets nearly a sure thing. For example, see this Boston Globe heads-up on “a game with a windfall for a knowing few”. Imagine showing up at your corner gas station with $100,000s in cash for lottery tickets—that would be a great day for the own, especially given the seller earns a commission that can grow to $100,000 for some jackpots.
“Bettors like the Selbees, who spent at least $500,000 on the game, had almost no risk of losing money.”
– Mark Kon, a professor of math and statistics at Boston University
Favorite posts from three rings in the 2011 Management Improvement Blog Carnival (1 of 3)
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior on December 17, 2011
For the 2011 Annual Management Improvement Blog Carnival, hosted by John Hunter, we (my son Hank and I) will pick our favorite posts from these three blogs:
See us hosts and the blogs we’ve chosen to review at this site coordinated by John and background on the carnival itself here.
I will start off our part in this Carnival with my take on Edge Perspectives. The author is John Hagel — a fellow with a background in law and management who caught my fancy for his passion about embracing change. I live by Apostle Paul’s advice (1 Thes. 5:14-22) to “Test all things; hold fast what is good.” However, as Hagel explains in his blog on Cognitive Biases in Times of Uncertainty uncertainty breeds fear for new technologies that offer big benefits. It’s amazing to see how much people vary in interest/aversion to new technology. For example, I recently made an impulse purchase of Sony’s Internet TV Blu-ray disc player. When I asked Hank to help me set it up in our master bedroom, he got really keyed up about how this device streams content controlled by a nifty remote with all the functions of a full-size keyboard. But then my wife tried to turn the TV on – not a good scene. She just needs a lot more time to embrace technological change than Hank or me.
A number of the 2011 blogs in Edge Perspectives provide in-depth reviews of books by other big thinkers offering their prescription for how Americans can regain their edge. To be honest, I am just too busy dealing with everyday life to work up the necessary energy to get a grasp on these huge issues. My attention gets re-engaged when Hegel delivers thoughts from the heart such as his Revolution from the Edge entry. Here he reports back from TED, nonprofit devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading” that draws top thinkers from around the globe, one of whom is invited to turn the world inside out – aided by a $100,000 award. Hagel focuses his thoughts on the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa, where a well-educated younger generation broke free of old ways enforced by rigid and repressive dictators. Having just come away from India, where democracy fosters technological innovation (if only the infrastructure could catch up!), I am keen on Hagel’s call for those in developed nations to do everything possible for removing the barriers of corruption, debt and environmental degradation that stand in the way of further progress by emerging countries.
“As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. … We need not wait to see what others do.”
Mahatma Gandhi
Pareto distribution makes a handy ‘screw driver’
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior on October 30, 2011
“What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?” This was the 2011 question posed by sociologist Nicholas Christakis in his annual survey of science and technology gurus via the online salon Edge. Internet scholar Clay Shirky chose the Pareto distribution as a tool that could be put to better use for reducing income disparities. When I led manufacturing improvement teams, I graphed cumulative losses by cause and used this Pareto chart* to focus my engineering colleagues on the 20 percent that caused 80% of the problems. It seems that Christakis knew something when he put forward the Pareto early this year because, since then, the 99 Percent Project has taken aim at the 1 percent of folks from Wall Street who purportedly control all of our money. Being a technical type I am not interested in getting into issues of elitism. I’d rather experiment to identify the vital few factors that affect a system of interest.
Meanwhile, the United Nations declared this summer that tomorrow, October the 31st, the 7 billionth baby will be born. They may be overly precise on the timing, yet this is a very compelling statistic. Breaking down the world’s wealth by this population will continue to keep economists busy, but you can be sure it will maintain a “predictable imbalance” as observed by their colleague Pareto. Along those lines, I suggest you measure how Halloween candy gets distributed to your neighborhood population of trick-or-treaters. If a few big kids don’t take the lion’s share, I will eat my monster mask..
*The American Society of Quality (ASQ) provides a detailing of the Pareto Chart here.
Wrong more often than right but never in doubt
Posted by mark in Consumer behavior, Uncategorized on October 23, 2011
The New York Times Magazine provided a great readout on the “Surety of Fools”* in today’s issue. The author, psychologist Daniel Kahneman, starts by providing a real-life example of WYSIATI – “What you see is all there is.” Read his story to learn more about this, but basically it means that many times what you observe does not provide any meaningful information for predicting future behavior. Cocky Wall Street brokers are hit very hard, especially the males, who “act on their useless ideas significantly more often than women.” Ouch!
Kahneman examined the illusion of skill in a group of investment advisors who competed for annual performance bonuses. He found zero correlation on year-to-year rankings, thus the firm was simply rewarding luck. What I find most interesting is his observation that even when confronted with irrefutable evidence of misplaced confidence in one’s own ability to prognosticate, most people just carry on with the same level of self-assurance.
The bottom line is that you shouldn’t swallow everything said by assertive and confident people who advise on highly-variable systems such as financial markets. Heeding what an experienced physician suggests is one thing, but going with the most boastful money manager is another.
“True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes.”
— Daniel Kahneman
“It’s what you learn after you know it all that counts.”
— John Wooden
* Posted earlier under a different title here.