-->
Business people generally know that satisfying customers is a good thing, but they don’t necessarily understand the link between satisfaction and profits. This is partly because much of the original work was done so long ago that contradictory cases and nuances have created confusion to build up. Additionally, some companies have succeeded for a time despite poor satisfaction, generally in industries where there is limited or no competition such as airlines.
But even here [...]
Continue Reading ->
It shouldn't be a surprise that Nate Silver (statistics whizkid behind
FiveThirtyEight.com which did an outstanding job of predicting the results of the 2008 election) is turning his attention to matters other than politics. After all, before he became a political pundit his forte was baseball statistics.
If you want to read the published predictions head over to the [...]
I just came across an interesting issue with validation in an online survey using a Van Westendorp pricing model. Van Westendorp is one of the common ways to test pricing by directly questioning prospective purchasers. This post isn't about Van Westendorp, also known as the Price Sensitivity Meter (you can find plenty of references online, including a
starting point on Wikipedia) but you [...]
I had decided not to comment on political polling during this election season. Although this post concerns the election, it isn't about polling. It isn't directly about research, but it does show the problems that can happen when numeric results are reported imperfectly, and, even more important, when reporting on the report confuses instead of clarifying.
Today (10/7/08), I read a snippet from the Puget Sound Business Journal "Washington State Voter Registration hits 3.5 [...]
The Pew Research Center has tracked broadband adoption for several years; the most recent study shows that the adoption rate has dropped. As of April 2008, 55% of the adults in the U.S. have access to broadband at home, with just 10% using dial-up connections.
As you might imagine, broadband usage is unevenly distributed. People living in rural areas are less likely to have a high speed connection, as are lower income and African Americans (Hispanic broadband access is similar to the [...]
I asked myself this question the first time I saw a survey invitation with the following warning:
Please note, this survey contains media that is not compatible with Firefox Internet Browser
The invitation continued with instructions to copy and paste the link into an Internet Explorer window if Firefox is my default browser.
Let's look at this in more detail. To dispose of [...]
