An article in the New York Times, “Which Records Get Shattered?“, analyzes the prospects for record-breaking at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Nate Silver returns to sports analysis – his old stomping ground before he started the FiveThirtyEight blog which covers election polling. Michael Phelps, 4x100m relay, Beijing 2008 Olympics John Nunn winning his [Read More]
Published Studies
QR codes not hitting the spot
Many marketing people have been promoting the value of QR codes for quite a while. After all, the promise seems obvious – post a targeted code somewhere, make it easy for someone to reach the website, and track the results of different campaigns. Studies such as this February 2011 survey from Baltimore based agency MGH [Read More]
Impact of cell phones on 2010 Midterms and beyond politics
Whether you are a political junkie or not, recent articles and analysis about mobile phones as part of data collection should be of interest to those who design or commission survey research. Cost, bias, and predictability are key issues. In years gone by, cell phone users were rarely included in surveys. There was uncertainty about [Read More]
Why you should run statistical tests
A recent article in the Seattle Times covering a poll by Elway Research gives me an opportunity to discuss statistical testing. The description of the methodology indicates, as I’d expect, that the poll was conducted properly to achieve a representative sample: About the poll: Telephone interviews were conducted by live, professional interviewers with 405 voters [Read More]
Hyatt’s “random acts of generosity” – good idea or off target?
Sunday’s New York Times Magazine has an article about a new program being introduced by the Hyatt hotel chain intended to stimulate real loyalty in the form of future business through gratitude generated by generous acts such as having a bar tab waived randomly. It isn’t totally clear how closely the new program is associated [Read More]
comScore’s State of U.S. Online Retail Q1 2009
The recent comScore presentation on the State of Online Retail in the U.S. contained few surprises, but mainly confirmations together with some interesting perspectives. For those unfamiliar with this material, comScore creates a quarterly report on Online Retail, combining survey results along with data from comScore’s behavioral panel. The behavioral data covers many aspects of [Read More]