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…
Category: Market Research
Uncovering The Message In The Mess Of Big Data
This week I’m focusing on research that I’ve co-authored with Xin Wang in Business Horizons. We called this ‘Uncovering the Message in the Mess of Big Data’. Our article aims to explain to managers how they can work out what the messages are in large amounts of data. What Data Should You Look At? The classic application…
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…
Crossing Chasms and Anecdotal Evidence
Geoffrey Moore‘s book, Crossing the Chasm, has been a hugely popular book in the marketing strategy area. I can see why. Moore has a clear thesis, the examples are interesting, and the topic important. Unfortunately Crossing the Chasm has a plausible story but no more. Crossing the chasm is just an anecdote, a good anecdote…
Understanding The Topics In Consumer Research
The Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) reached forty years old in 2015. To help the celebrations we conducted an analysis of the topics featured in the journal over the years. For many journals, you can use the keywords supplied by the authors. The downside of this is that authors may use fashionable words wanting to…
