One of the classic problems in understanding voter behavior is whether people vote with their wallets. Bascially, do voters make choices that depend heavily upon their own economic self-interest? Like almost any social science question you are never going to get 100% compliance with any idea. One can almost certainly find someone who calculates what…
Category: Decision Making
GMOs Forget The Science
Scientists including biologists, medical doctors, and geneticists have many wonderful qualities. Yet, if the public policy response to Covid-19 taught us anything it was that some people who are great in their scientific fields have communication problems. This isn’t just a shame. It often undermines everything that they are trying to do. I see a…
Not Aiding An Opposing Group
The fact that we form groups, alliances even, is fundamental human behavior. Working together allows us to achieve things that we couldn’t do independently. Sadly, almost inevitably, being in a group brings conflict with other groups. Much work is done on how we react to group-based conflict. What do we know about whether we are…
Using Data In Decisions
It is important to have good intuition when using data in decisions, and this intuition can be improved. This is a central message of a book that recently emerged from teaching these topics at Columbia University. The message makes a lot of sense and is likely, if anything, to make even more sense as time…
Communicating Numbers
Chip Heath and Karla Starr have a book on communicating numbers. It makes a lot of sensible points. Some might seem obvious but it is easy to get these sort of things wrong. I certainly have in the past, so the advice is worth paying attention to. They even put a mention into their book…
Solving Problems Upstream
Dan Heath has a book on solving problems upstream. The central idea is that it is better to solve a problem nearer its source than try and solve the problem once it has fully manifested. Heath’s hard-to-disagree with advice is that it is better to stop the horror movie monster being conjured rather than having…
Ideology, Persuasion, And Going Green
A major challenge is persuading members of the public with very different worldviews to take actions aimed at the common good, such as recycling. An appeal that works for a conservative might not work on a liberal, and vice versa. What then do we know about ideology, persuasion, and going green? People Differ In What…
Tipping And Discrimination
In the US servers’ tips are often treated as part of their pay. Although technically voluntary the servers rely on the tips so one needs an astonishingly good reason not to tip. Despite it being a social obligation different servers do get different levels of tips so what do we know about tipping and discrimination?…
The Future Is Abundance
Peter Diamandis & Steven Kotler’s book Abundance is a great read. It argues that the future is abundance. The world will be able to produce what we need to give everyone in it a decent life. The book is a valuable antidote to pessimism. The Future Is Abundance, Innovation, And Progress Whenever they see discussions…
Comparing Text Classification Methods
Marketing research, especially academic research, now assesses a lot of unstructured text data. (Unstructured data is that which does not come in neat database/spreadsheet form of rows and columns). Classifying such text is a task that computers excel at. So, how do we go about comparing text classification methods to find which one best fits…
