Recently I was reading Max Weber’s thoughts on “Science as a Vocation” given in a lecture on November 7th, 1917. By science Weber means knowledge creation in the broader sense so pretty much all academics should be included as scientists. It can also tell us about the persistence of academic customs. The Persistence of Academic Customs There…
Category: Teaching
Teaching CLV Badly
Ex-Ivey PHD student and now University of Calgary professor, Charan Bagga, and I have just published an article. This focused on the teaching of CLV (Customer Lifetime Value). We surveyed the state of case-based teaching materials related to CLV and found them a pretty shoddy bunch. Teaching CLV badly seems to be the default way to teach…
The Secret Axis: Label Your Axis So As Not To Lie
Gary Smith’s advice on statistics, Standard Deviations, is a really useful and entertaining book. In this Smith points out a number of major problems with the way stats are used. Some problems arise from deliberate tricks played by researchers/managers describing data. Other problems arise through carelessness; the researcher/manager using the data doesn’t realize they are abusing…
Lying With Statistics
While statistics can help us understand the world there is plenty of opportunity to abuse them to mislead. Darrell Huff wrote a short book that was first published in 1952 on lying with statistics. Some of the text shows its age (lots of male pronouns and references to gentleman) but many of the lessons remain applicable today. Reading Huff’s…
Spurious Correlations: A Big Problem With Big Data?
Tyler Vigen has done great work popularizing Spurious Correlations. He has found an effective way to convey an important message. Namely, that correlation does not equal causation. Lots of things are correlated but that doesn’t mean that they have anything to do with each other. Data Dredging To create his graphs Vigen indulges in: Data Dredging… a technique used…
How Do We Determine Author Order?
Academics enjoy splitting into obscure little groups. What is more they rarely agree about what is interesting. Perhaps the only thing we can agree on is that academics, and the problems facing academics, are fascinating. A major problem for academics is determining author order on joint works. Academic Teams Most academic articles are created by teams. Given that, in marketing…
Word Clouds And Marketing Thought
Word clouds are a useful way of condensing large amounts of text. Obviously, they don’t perfectly describe complex ideas but they can highlight what a text is about in an easy-to-digest manner. Word clouds typically let the number of times a word is used dictate its size in the cloud. Interesting colors and exotic placement of the words allow for…
Explaining Omitted Variable Bias
Charles Whelan’s Naked Statistics is an enjoyable and informative read. He does a very good job of simplifying statistics. He explains what statistical methods can do but also the problems that people get into using statistics. Here I’ll focus on him explaining Omitted Variable Bias. Whelan tackles this problem very clearly. Explaining Omitted Variable Bias Omitted variable bias sounds like…
The Problem Of Researchers Giving Advice To Managers
Translating academic research into advice for managers is a tough skill. I really don’t think we value the skill enough. We hope that researchers will effortlessly translate quality research into quality managerial advice. There seems little reason to believe this. Many otherwise excellent researchers giving advice to managers are not at their best. Researchers Giving Advice To Managers Barbara Kahn’s Global…
Mapping Social Networks With NodeXL
Today I’m taking a slightly different tack. I’m recommending software. This allows researchers and managers to go about mapping social networks with NodeXL. The good news is that this is software that is an add-on to Excel. (Sadly it only works with the Windows version). It is easy to use, and if you already know…
