I enjoy a nice book on persuasion and Jonah Berger‘s on catalysts and persuasion is certainly one of them. (They make excellent gifts at any time of the year). His prior books were enjoyable and generally illuminating. The Catalyst follows in that tradition. (Although I do think it is funny when writing one of these…
Total Q Measures Investment Opportunities Not Firm Value
Papers in finance can sometimes get a hefty citation count boost when they get picked up in marketing. Peters and Taylor‘s 2017 paper on Total q is a nice paper. They make the very reasonable assertion that their Total q measures investment opportunities better than current Tobins q approximations. While I’m not a finance person…
Do Generalists Triumph?
Given I am a marketing professor, who has been an accountant working in politics, who was educated as an ancient historian. It is perhaps no surprise that I am naturally drawn to the arguments in Range. In this David Epstein lays out his case for having a diverse range of skills. His argument is in…
Bayes’ Theorem And Common Sense
Today we look at Bayes’ theorem and common sense highlighting the role of prior beliefs. How Should We Think About Probabilities? There is a big rift in the way people think about probabilities. (This is in addition to he normal challenges doing the math). Events either happen or they don’t. We can think of probabilities…
Rankings Matter For Good Or Ill
The copious detail in Ellen Hazelkorn‘s Rankings and the Reshaping of Higher Education makes it a useful read. A challenge with her approach is that she is able to give an excellent snapshot of higher education in 2011. Sadly, as things have moved on this leaves some bits dated. Still, I would think the key…
Advice On Data Science, It Isn’t Too Hard to Understand
Marketers should understand the data science models that are increasingly being used in the discipline. We really need good advice on data science. As such it is helpful to find simple explanations of data science models. Numsence by Annalyn Ng and Kenneth Soo is an admirable attempt to clarify basic models used in data science….
To Employ Marketing Metrics Consider User Needs
One the basic ideas in marketing is that the consumer of whatever you are providing decides whether an offering is useful. You shouldn’t just shout at your customers and tell them that they should appreciate what they are being given. I think a lot of marketers forget this basic idea when it comes to marketing…
Universities Don’t Seem Completely Toxic To Me
If you like your angst with lashings of the phrase neoliberalism John Smyth’s book, The Toxic University, is for you. The title with its references to Zombie and Rock Stars is fun. Unfortunately, you get the impression that the title is where the fun ends. Smyth makes a number of criticisms of universities and many…
American Higher Education’s Uncertain Future
Moving to the US I thought I should get up to date with US higher education. Daniel Johnson’s book, on American Higher Education’s Uncertain Future, is a critique of where we are. I was expecting criticism of government funding levels, lack of appreciation of the benefits of academic thought, and maybe students themselves. It isn’t…
Zombie Statistics & Other Advice on Dealing with Nonsense
A second post on Bergstrom and West’s enjoyable book, Calling Bullshit. They tackle the problems we face with the amount of nonsense around in the information age. The book contains much useful advice on spotting problems in black boxes and avoiding zombie statistics. You Can Spot Nonsense Even In Black Boxes I liked their advice…