Our “surprisingly popular” algorithm for finding truth even when the majority is wrong. Cover of @nature this week. https://t.co/EKK71YRnUz
— Sebastian Seung (@SebastianSeung) January 25, 2017
If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. – Thomas J. Watson
Implicit vs Explicit Targeting
Scott Galloway seems to claim that implicit targeting based on clickstream (i.e. observing a user’s browsing history and making recommendations) beats self-reports by a wide margin. While I’ve said before that I think doing so is a great idea, I’m not sure this will always be true. Google has done quite well for itself by demanding that users first type something into the search box.
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Life is full of problems that are, quite simply, hard. And the mistakes made by people often say more about the intrinsic difficulties of the problem than about the intrinsic fallibility of human brains. – Brian Christian & Tom Griffiths
How to Counterbalance in Qualtrics without Duplicating Questions
Counterbalancing is an experimental procedure to control for the effect of question order. This post shows you how to do it in Qualtrics without having to create duplicate questions.
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When I look at the future of TV, I think it’s going to be on demand; it’s going to be mobile and cross-device; it’s going to be global; and it’s going to include a diverse set of content. – Susan Wojcicki, CEO YouTube
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There is a close link between decision making and action. By making a decision a person commits herself to act in a certain way. – Henry Montgomery
Sorting As Screening – Poster Presented at SCP 2016 St. Pete
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Abstract
Sorting by a product attribute can diminish the importance weight of that attribute. When choosing is difficult, consumers may treat sorting as screening. Once options are sorted, consumers may form a consideration set comprising the options at the top. Because these options are more homogeneous with respect to the sorted attribute, consumers pay less attention to the sorted attribute in favor of a second attribute. This attentional shift emerges in a subsequent conjoint analysis, with less weight placed on the sorted attribute and more weight on a second attribute.
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The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior
Shlomo Benartzi and Jonah Lehrer have a new book on consumer behavior specifically on screens titled The Smarter Screen: Surprising Ways to Influence and Improve Online Behavior. This is a rich, understudied area, and I’m excited they wrote this. While I don’t agree with all of their conjectures (for example, decision tournaments), there are some really good sections on topics such as fluency and customization.